Hull 721, plot arc the second

[Ekiqa]

I just had a very scary thought.

What would Mirannon do if he got hold of a World Devastator?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

The brain imaging thing is something of a long shot; Thrawn is exceptionally lucky in the method of his entry to the fleet in that regard-got in without having to go through a full medical, that undoubtedly would have told the docs rather more than he wanted them to know.

Also avoiding checkups, any need to visit a doc for that matter, nosy bureaucrats, wardroom gossip- if he really has managed to get away that free and clear from the normal life of the fleet, to the extent that almost his entire normal medical and service records are classified, there definitely is something to blackmail him for- the details of how he managed it.

It's going to be an iterative process, reconstructing his memories from the activity of his brain, trying out possible solutions to see if they fit with each other, trying to mesh parts of the whole to get a self- consistent result, and with little to go on, but a lot of computer power to do it with- it is, in the end, inevitably going to be a look through a foggy window. It'll produce something; whether that something is a fair reflection or a complete mirage, or how far between the two- well, consider the problem of error checking this conceptual model against reality.

When I first came across the description of how a Hyperspace Orbiting Scanner is supposed to work, I thought something along the lines of "can you exorcise a scientific abomination by chanting 'the power of Heisenberg compels you' at it?" They seemed ridiculously optimistic and probably impossible.

Now I tend to think that, given what else we know about sensor capabilities across the lightspeed barrier, it's not impossible, but it is too good to be entirely true. I don't think they can track individual subatomic particles. Theoretical resolution- let me think about that. Practical resolution depends on how much they spent on it.

The world devastators are what, six years away at this point, so probably still on the drawing board at most; I'm tempted to say he'd play with it, but in practise, I doubt they could be very good warships- there's too much of their bulk that is factory facility. The rapid prototyping facilities they must have are a dream, though.

[Vehrec]

As a minor point, ever since I started hearing about what Mirannon was planning to do with this rebuild, I thought that that would make an excellent part of the World Devastator construction process. All of it, from the forcefields to the spot-fusion of elements. Don't have enough iron from that crust? Fuse silicon and oxygen to make it right on the spot. Combined with tricks like duplicators, and we have something very close to the kind of facilities the WDs must have had for starters.

[Thanas]

I am not sure if medical files of flag officers (and especially those involved in covert ops) should not automatically classified per se as a routine procedure. After all, you wouldn't want the underlings to get blackmail info on you with all the crimes the imperial leadership committs (like drug abuse which even a GADM was guilty of)

[Crayz9000]

I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself upon hearing the description of the indignancy that poor AT-AT suffered...

[Ekiqa]

The world devastators are what, six years away at this point, so probably still on the drawing board at most; I'm tempted to say he'd play with it, but in practise, I doubt they could be very good warships- there's too much of their bulk that is factory facility. The rapid prototyping facilities they must have are a dream, though.

What I meant was, what types of ships would he give birth to? If he can modify an Imperator, what would he design?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I'm having a hard time figuring out the answer to that, because it's such a dynamic situation; could spin off chaotically in any direction. To really figure that out, I'll have to give him one. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...anyway,


Hull 721 arc 2 ch 7

‘Hell of a leave this is turning out to be, Boss.’ Hruthhal quipped. They weren’t in a disused warehouse; they had found one, broken in, moved some stuff around to give the impression that they were barricading themselves in and preparing to shoot it out with the police, then legged it several streets away.

They had found and broken into somebody’s house, in a conveniently located redevelopment zone; middle class or better, middle aged divorcee judging by the furniture, currently out to work.

Which, at least the middle aged divorcee part, was what was currently preoccupying Pel Aldrem, especially considering the black looks Jhareylia was giving him.

‘Four years.’ She said. ‘Four years as an Alliance operative, and never suspected of doing anything worse than pushing the limits of the late-opening ordinances. Three weeks on the side of the Empire and there are three separate police forces chasing me.’

‘Fairly normal for us on leave, actually.’ Tarshkavik said, partly because it wasn’t that far from the truth- only the offences were out of the ordinary- and partly because he suspected she would savage Pel Aldrem if he opened his mouth.


‘What do we do?’ Gendrik, trying to be responsible, asked.

‘Beats the kriff out of me.’ Aldrem admitted. ‘I know what the marines wanted us for, I think the ISB just stuck their noses in so that they could start a faction fight and get some kind of compromise deal, but I’ve no idea what CorSec thought they were doing there. Did we actually kill anybody?’

‘If we didn’t, we sure as shit maimed a few. Mostly ISB, which has to be a good thing.’ Hruthhal pointed out.

‘How’s Sorgn?’ Aldrem asked Gendrik, who was tending to him. It had been a brief exchange of blaster bolts, fire and flee, covering their own retreat, successful but not completely one sided.

‘Cauterised, is about the best I can say.’ Gendrik said. ‘He’s in bad shape.’

‘Much as I don’t want to be arrested…kidnap a doctor and bring them here to treat him, then we can remain on the run and support ourselves with a career of bank robbery, terrorism and extortion.’ Aldrem mock- suggested, bringing the idea up himself to kill it before it got off the ground. Far too dangerous.

‘You left out counterintelligence and revenge. That really doesn’t sound like what I’d wanted to do with the rest of my life.’ Jhareylia helped him, with the distinct overtones that he was who she was going to blame.

‘I had hoped for more explosions and less jail, myself.’ He admitted.


They had been supposed to be put in cells on the dockyard orbiting platform; apparently an alternative demand had come through that the admiral had been too busy to notice or countermand, and they were shipped to the surface instead in a native, civilian shuttle.

Land, and right there on the pad, the Imperial Security Bureau- who theoretically had no jurisdiction on Corellia, but were not renowned for letting that stop them- showed up.

In four speeder sedans capable of taking four people each, so the only way they could have arrested the gun team was if the agents had stayed behind and their prisoners agreed to drive themselves into custody. Logic was not one of their strong points, either.


In the event, it hadn’t mattered, because the stormtrooper detachment, two squads of the rear-admiral’s personal guard, had refused to hand them over. They were busy threatening each other when the Alliance gatecrashed the party.

Strays left behind from the earlier rescue- and- abduction, a local rebel cell; nobody famous, but an odd mix of old and young, a grab-bag of random citizens, techs and traders, business suits and street bums, all normal enough apart from the headbands with the Alliance emblem they all wore.

They piled out of two vans and three speeders at the edge of the apron and started blasting at the Imperial party, just spraying blaster bolts at semi- random.

Aldrem and the team had done the most sensible thing they could in the circumstances; hijacked the shuttle. The Corellian police, alerted by starport control, had arrived on the scene while they were trying to crash-start the thing, and began shooting at everyone who was shooting at them, which included the ISB.

It had been a good moment to run away, and, after no moments’ thought at all, they had. Reflexive fire had come their way, it not being obvious from whom, and they had no time to unpack their personal weapons; it had been a minor miracle that only one, Leading Mount Maintenance Technician Libo Sorgn, had been hit.

He needed medical help- but who from, and at what cost? They hadn’t made it very far, anyway; the port’s own law enforcement/point defence turrets had shot at them as they were lifting off, and blown out the ion engines.

They had been trying to go nap of the earth anyway, hide between the buildings and get beneath the horizon as soon as possible; Suluur, who really had been flying like a madman or a man with nothing left to lose, had managed to wrestle the thing down to a semi- controlled crash in the outskirts of the port district.

‘Well,’ Aldrem said, thinking aloud, ‘the ISB don’t have the understanding to do a deal with- they’re the ‘duh’ school of law enforcement, just bright enough to know what to accuse somebody of. Never compromise, never empathise, never think if they can possibly help it. They’re out of the question.’


‘Who was he, anyway?’ Jhareylia asked. ‘The blueskin- weren’t those Admiral’s squares?’

‘There are a few.’ Hruthhal said. ‘Nonhumans, cyborgs, women- natural odd beings out; they come in two sorts, the ‘yes I’m a looney’ dangerous eccentric, or they go the other way, hyper-Imperial, cover their asses by being more Correct Thinking than thou.’

‘Thou?’ Aldrem said, unbelievingly.

‘Sorry, but thinking about Correct Thought always makes me come over all medieval.’ Hruthhal said.

‘Yeh, I know the feeling- anyway,’ Aldrem said, ‘that particular blueskin’s got the reputation of being a bit of both. There are a fair few no-shit stories about him floating around the Fleet; spent most of his career doing special jobs for Oversector Centre, the Ubiqtorate, the Inquisitorius, the Church of the Dark Side.

The sort of things you’re really not supposed to talk about, which is probably why they did. He’s a smart man- well, being- and an apparently incurable smartarse. Enjoys being right, supposed to be a pretty good boss but definitely a sarcastic bastard, and he does have a nasty streak.’

‘Turning ourselves into him couldn’t be worse than the ISB.’ Gendrik pointed out.

‘Yes, but we’ve shot up barbarian Trandoshan and Hapan slavers who weren’t as bad as the ISB.’ Hruthhal said.

‘What about Captain Lennart?’ Jhareylia asked.

‘Didn’t have the authority to stop us getting arrested in the first place, not without openly going renegade- and to be honest,’ Aldrem said, ‘we’re a discipline problem, if you hadn’t noticed. Scams and dodges are one thing, but blatantly disobeying a superior officer- I wouldn’t expect him to stick his neck out that far, not for the awkward squad.’


‘We need a doctor, fast.’ Gendrik said.

‘I know.’ Aldrem growled at him- he was painfully aware of it. ‘Who lives here, anyway? Search the house- maybe we’ll find something we can use, maybe the owner’s hypochondriac enough to have a med- droid or something. Oh, and eat, drink and crap if you have to. Might be the last time we see civilised plumbing for a while.’

‘Thanks a bunch, chief, you’ve probably just guaranteed we’ll have to escape through a sewer.’ Hruthhal said, tempting fate, and both men made rude gestures at each other.

They searched, and it was Tarshkavik who found the sickest joke of the lot. He walked back into the main room holding a picture frame, handed it to Aldrem. It was a framed diploma.

‘So we have…MD, indeed? If we want a doctor, all we have to do is wait for the owner to come home. We, oh.’ Aldrem said, then noticed Tarshkavik pointing at the specialty.

‘Provided we have an arse problem.’ Aldrem added, because they had, indeed, broken into the house of a proctologist.

‘Fits perfectly, though, try to do the right thing and you usually end up getting screwed in the ass.’ Tarshkavik pointed out.

‘Put that back- anyone found anything useful?’ Aldrem asked.


‘Lots of first aid kit in the bathroom.’ Jhareylia announced, with a small translucent bag full of bottles, tubes, bandages, plasters and whatnot.

‘Good. Does it look bad enough that we need to cut the dead tissue out of the wound?’ He said, trying not to look at the charred patch in Sorgn’s side directly. ‘Where are we, intestines? Galactic Spirit. All right, pile on all the painkillers, antiseptics, regrowth factors and burn dressings you can think of. Anyone else?’

‘Pel Aldrem, are you squeamish?’ Jhareylia asked him.

‘Not when…look, it’s a focus thing. Line of duty, kriff no, but here we are bleeding all over somebody’s carpet-‘ Sorgn wasn’t bleeding, shedding a little but not that, but he was speaking metaphorically. ‘- and my imagination keeps looking at that and multiplying by about twenty million.’ He said.


‘Her computer’s a mess.’ Fendon stated. ‘No indexing, everything a random floating pool of entries, secured patient notes, public access and shared, random files- it must take a great deal of effort to be this disorganised. Oh for kriff’s sake she reads pulp romances. I am not getting a good vibe from this woman- ah, what’s a padawan?’

‘What? Apprentice jedi, wasn’t it?’ Aldrem asked Jhareylia, on the grounds that as an ex rebel she would be more likely to know about the force than they would.

‘Think so.’ She said, busy with a tube of burn dressing. ‘Where does it say that?’

‘One of her romances. Trash.’ Fendon stated. ‘As if the force ever made a difference, phantoms of the imagination-‘

‘I wonder…’ Hruthhal said. ‘I’m going to try a keyword search, do you promise not to take the piss out of me if I do?’

‘Only for the next decade or so. Hm, are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?’ Aldrem asked.

‘I hope not, the cover model isn’t big enough for the both of us.’ The chief petty officer ran a brief find function. ‘Yep, thought so. On page 84, there’s a section where the jedi knight has a long and meaningful talk with the showgirl who’s throwing herself at his apprentice.

It rambles all over the place, but picking out the words from the drivel- it’s thinly disguised pro- Jedi propaganda. Ramblings about the Force, about beliefs and doctrine, and the Jedi Order. I think we’ve got a closet Rebel here.’


‘What good does that really do us?’ Aldrem asked. ‘Even if we can find a rebel cell- and remember they’re being hunted right now anyway- big enough to hide us and get us out of here, they’d be pretty hard on you.’ He said specifically to Jhareylia. ‘They must have you pegged as a defector by now.’

‘Probably.’ She admitted. ‘Still might be a better option than going back to the Empire.’

‘I don’t know about that; every time I’ve had anything to do with it the intelligence game has been a game of bastards, each side racing to see who can do the most blackmail, theft, character assassination and general assholishness. I wouldn’t trust anyone involved, on either side.’ Aldrem said.

Partly out of lingering loyalty to the cause, she said ‘Is there really another alternative?’

‘Well, thinking about going on the run- I’m pushing thirty-five; after a time the whole idea of running like a wolf on the streets, freedom beneath the law, all that teenage macho crap starts to pale. That’s probably the worst option of the lot.’ He shuddered at the thought of becoming some kind of underworld goon.

‘What about the Corellian Navy? Pay and conditions aren’t too bad, from what I hear.’ Gendrik suggested.

‘It’d take them half a second to tell us to kriff off, if they have any brains at all. We’re good, but we’re not that good- no amount of talent’s worth the shitstorm following us.’ Aldrem pointed out, pessimistically.


‘Ah, the computer’s beeping in a way I don’t like.’ Hruthhal said. ‘You don’t suppose-‘

‘Grab your kit and get out.’ Aldrem shouted, hoping nobody was in the fresher. Something that beeped in a dubious way, he didn’t want to hang around and see what it did when it stopped beeping.

He grabbed his kitbag in one hand and scooped up the wounded man with the other, and realised he wasn’t as good at this macho hero crap as he thought he was as he nearly tripped over his luggage. Jhareylia grabbed as much of the med bits as she could, and supported Sorgn on the other side as they shuffled out.

Most of the rest of the team was already out; Gendrik grabbed Sorgn and slung him across his shoulders in a fireman’s lift, and they made it out and behind the garden wall with about three seconds to spare.

The house went up in a brilliant white flare, bursting outward then what was left collapsing in on itself and burning. Probably a small proton bomb, an armour- killer landmine, Aldrem decided.

‘Why us? Why did we pick the one house in the entire city rigged to self destruct?’ Tarshkavik asked no-one in particular.

Which meant it was the boss’s job to answer. ‘We’re gunners, you don’t think blowing people up results in bad karma? All right, I’m usually on the trigger, but it’s a team effort. Maybe we need to switch specialty to something kinder and gentler. Ion cannon?’ Aldrem asked, and maybe there was something to it- he felt better now that something had exploded.

‘How about we specialise in running away really fast?’ Hruthhal suggested.


Assault shuttles are, generally speaking, bricks. Very few concessions to style and grace, and as almost everybody on board is armoured, ride quality isn’t a consideration either.

A situation not improved by the amateur in the co-pilot’s seat, who was running off half remembered memories and the vague hope that the instruments were laid out in a logical and consistent fashion. ‘Captain, are you all right? Do you want to let me fly?’ Aleph-3 asked him.

‘We have a perfectly competent pilot, if I wanted this thing well flown. I want to do this myself.’ Lennart gave a partial answer. The truth was he wanted to do something to stop himself brooding.

‘Personal reasons, Captain?’ She asked, as if she had a right to know. Which, arguably, she did.

He sat back in the copilot’s chair- a mistake; had to lean forward and stabilise the repulsors, the heavy shuttle was far from the most responsive and pilot friendly craft out there. Constant effort, constant attention.

He had had to demonstrate at least basic ability as a pilot to specialise as a navigator, but had been a much better helmsman- the interleaved complexities of managing a capital ship came more readily. Partly because he was even then subconsciously afraid of the force and where it could take him.

Assault shuttles were an uncomfortable middle ground between the two, not a fighter, not a ship, and he doubted if Aleph-3 could manage one nearly as well as she thought she could.


She, too, was something that required constant effort and constant attention, which he didn’t have to spare. She really needed a harem, an exceptionally well coordinated one who were all experts at reading her mood and had no sense of jealousy whatsoever.

That or someone all of her shell personalities could agree on- which meant someone acceptable to her sense of duty and discipline, that the hard core of her could warm to and coerce all the outer personalities into agreeing to. That inevitably had to be somebody in the chain of command, which would be abusing his position.


Did she deserve an answer? If anyone could lay claim to being the woman in his life, it was her. ‘Do you actually approve of what I did to Lady Lyria?’ He asked her, sourly, wondering which of the dozen or so would answer, and intending to convey that he would be very disappointed if the answer was yes.

The one in the middle, as it turned out, which could not back down from a challenge. ‘As a political act, yes; it was a determined and precise exploitation of a target’s vulnerabilities. As a personal thing- it was a calculated cruelty.’

‘And it’s my duty to do it, regardless of personal feelings?’ He challenged, knowing she would go with the party line. ‘Did you never consider that feelings exist for a reason, evolutionary, sociodynamic if not necessarily logical- something might feel wrong because it is wrong?’

‘What of it?’ she said, calmly, wondering what the kriff to do if he started cracking up. On one hand, the woman he had savaged and alienated was her rival, so good; on the other- actually, that still worked for her. ‘You did it, you’re here, and in something more closely resembling uniform than usual.’


‘It’s not the war I signed up for. I’ll take my chances against an open enemy, go looking for a hidden one, you know that- when it comes to blowing people up, I put my Anarchists’ Disunion card away a long time ago. A serving officer has no legal right to have a conscience, you accept that when you put on the uniform.’ Lennart admitted.

‘So why is hurting people emotionally so much worse than hurting them physically? What’s the sense of drawing a line between the two? Damage is damage.’ She said, being deliberately obtuse.

‘She trusted me, she thought she meant something to me, and she looked to me for moral support. And that was a freelance move, you know that, it didn’t come under the oath. I savaged her anyway.

I’m sure you can put together a good case for being a vicious bastard, survival of the nastiest, but I don’t see how you can avoid making it subversive of all real discipline…’ he challenged her.

In other words, think about all that your sister stood still for, allowed to happen to her. Think about how Adannan reduced her to a hollow shell, for his pleasure and amusement. And it was almost a dare, accept that this is right; that it is the will of the dark side that you be a chew toy- go on. Commit suicide, accept that you don’t matter.

For a moment she was tempted to take that dare, throw herself at his feet- but Laurentia had probably thought the same. The idea of sacrificing herself, to him, as an apprenticeship in the dark side?

Elegant, she had to admit. Trapped either way. Either she accepted that he had gone too far earlier, that there were moral limits, or that he had the right to break her now. Pretending to be stupid enough not to see the dilemma wasn’t really an option. Waiting for providence might work.


‘No right to a conscience?’ It did. Saved by the fool, as Aron’s brain caught up.

‘Legally speaking, no, and it isn’t even a specifically Imperial idea, it’s a carryover; think back to the old republic fleet, manned by kriffknowswhat from anywhere.

Twenty million races, each with their own gut sense of what’s right and proper, their own corona of divergent intellectuals and intellectual deviants, renegades and conservatives, xenophiles and xenophobes.’ Lennart said, allowing himself to be distracted.

‘Picture the situations that could occur; a Trandoshan captain refusing to suppress piracy because it’s right that the weak should suffer, a Hapan captain deciding that a dispute would be best solved by installing a matriarchal cyberdictatorship over both warring parties, a Wookie captain resolving to free the underclass- I could go on.

As an officer in the republic fleet, you had no authority to fall back on your own sense of right and wrong; there was no expectation that it would be in line with the settled will of the galaxy. You were just there to follow orders, which were in theory motivated by the common and shared moral judgement of the galactic community as a whole, as expressed through the Senate.’

Aron thought about that for a second, knowing enough not to say the first thing that popped into his head. ‘Hold on a moment, Captain. What senate?’

‘Ah, I see that you have spotted the continuity flaw.’ Lennart said, banking to avoid a loaded freight shuttle. ‘In practise, the power and authority of the Senate devolves onto the Emperor.’ And safest not to say anything after that thought.

‘The interesting bit is,’ he said, changing the subject, ‘the Alliance claims to be following their consciences- which is a head on contradiction with trying to restore the republic. You have to wonder what would happen if by some force-spawned miracle they actually won; would the Corellian wing rebel against the Chandrilian wing?

Slightly more to the point, has anybody got any bright ideas how to track down I-can’t-believe-I-made-him-a-Lieutenant Aldrem and his renegades?’

At that point, there was visible off to their starboard bow, not far from the spaceport, a brilliant white point of light. A detonating proton weapon, the flash fading into a rising column of chemical fire.

‘Ask a silly question…take over.’ Lennart ordered their actual pilot, and sat back in the second pilot’s chair. ‘Follow the trail of explosions, I’m sure there’ll be another one in a moment.’


‘Captain?’ Aron asked, sitting around like a spare thing, ‘what do we do when we find them?’

‘Good question. If they’re trying to explode their way out of trouble, we may have to improvise.’ Lennart said. ‘The local law might take an interest in them, too. I’d half intended to stage another mock defection via Lady Lyria.’

‘Too soon.’ Franjia gave her opinion. ‘They’d be too suspicious.’

‘In that case…we might require an exceptionally good actress to say the right things to the right people for them, guide them through it.’ He gave the option, which was really nothing of the kind, to Aleph-3.


‘Just how mocking is this defection intended to be?’ she decided to ask the professional question.

‘Well, you’re all going to find out about this anyway…I’d half intended to present myself as a possible subversion target. You can tell them a lot,’ he said specifically to Aleph-3, ‘and there is another matter, well, you always suspected that I’d left a trail of bitches and bastards across the galaxy.’

‘A son? Force sensitive?’ Aleph-3 leapt at the opportunity. She could see a dozen different ways to spin it- could be nothing more than an elaborate ploy to secure a light side tutor- on the other hand it could lead to some very big rebel fish wandering into the net.

There were a handful of Jedi who had escaped the purges, some of them had managed to pass on some of their beliefs and skills, there was always that thin stream of new potential emerging- but there were very few Alliance force users who were actually any good. Surely, for someone like Jorian Lennart, they would have to send one of their tiny number of real operators.

Naturally, they would be suspicious- extremely so- but the Alliance was wide open to defections, real and staged. They couldn’t afford not to be, they needed people and materiel. The chance to exploit a senior, notorious Imperial officer- who went far enough back to have served with the republic fleet and known the Jedi- they had to rise to that bait.


Something of a mystery why Lennart hadn’t voted with his feet already, in fact. And… ‘Why do you want to take this risk? If I had a nasty suspicious mind I’d suspect you of wanting to place your son on the other side of the fence, with the light side.’ She said.

‘You do have a nasty suspicious mind, at least one, that’s why I’m sending you.’ Lennart said, on something of a backhanded compliment. ‘She, actually, is currently in jail. That much really is a personal matter.

I could buy the local legal system, I have more prize and bounty money than I know what to do with, wholesale bribery and corruption seems entirely the right thing to do with it- but it would be clumsy and obvious. Getting the rebels to rescue her for me seems much more elegant.’

‘As long as we’re not involved, this time.’ Franjia said, half wishing they were just to get out of the immediate area.

‘I’ll probably need someone to rescue the infiltration party from the Alliance when they’re done.’ Lennart said. ‘You can be responsible for that bit, if you like.’ He was just being facetious, it wasn’t an order.

‘I approve.’ Aleph-3 said. ‘Having things happen that way makes it seem as if the rebels are trying to use her against you- not an endearing act. That should help secure your daughter’s loyalty to the Empire.’


Before he could comment on that- and exactly why am I juggling with fire in permitting- hell, engineering- things to be this way, he asked himself- the pilot announced ‘Approaching now, I see them.’

On the ground they would have been aware, and presumably wary; most of them were hiding behind someone’s garden wall, two of the team- Gendrik and Tarshkavik- were levering open an accesspoint to the suburban service tunnels.

Assault shuttles were not stealthy, they announced themselves with the sound of a brick being thrown through the air- never mind stealth, they weren’t even aerodynamic.

‘Just there beside the crater, we can’t do any more damage, and, ah.’ Sensor contacts that identified as police vehicles, armoured and armed uprated speeders. ‘Don’t shoot the cops. At least not without a direct order.’ Lennart told the shuttle’s command crew.

The shuttle pilot and flight engineer were starfighter corps, the gunners were marines; the pilot said as they touched down ‘Captain, do you really think we would do something like that?’

‘No, but I might be tempted.’ Lennart admitted. ‘Dismount.’

Telgorn didn’t design assault shuttles with the suburban environment in mind; it was a fairly upscale neighbourhood with large gardens, which was all that saved the houses on either side from being crushed. Flying into and demolishing small buildings was entirely within the gamma class’ performance limits.

They also didn’t figure on much of a passenger complement. The spacetrooper pods were empty, they were just a shade too proton-happy for this business, it was OB17 and two squads of the boarding batallion. They would be overcrowded, lifting off. Hopefully.


Aldrem and his madmen came to something resembling attention as they noticed their commanding officer; Lennart called ‘Medic,’ over his shoulder to the stormtroopers as he spotted the wounded man. ‘Actually, make that two, one for the Lieutenant’s head. He might get off more lightly if it can be proved he’s insane.’

‘Um…afternoon, sir?’ Aldrem said sheepishly, as one of the stormtroopers ran up to him and fished a scanner cap out of his pack; Lennart waved the overly- literal team corpsman back.

‘Tell me this; at the end of that unplanned exercise in putting yourself in harm’s way, have you learnt anything?’ Lennart posed a silly question expecting a silly answer, from which he could learn a lot about what had happened.

In trying to read meaning out of artworks, it occurred to Lennart, the rear-admiral was taking a distinctly dubious shortcut; it was so often a leader’s job, and talent if they were lucky, to read men.

‘Let me think…”don’t”?’ Aldrem said, facetiously- a less capable man might have said that in imitation of genuine sangfroid. It couldn’t have been that bad, although some of it was relief. There was a medic, and at least now he wasn’t going to have to live the rest of his life as an underworld gunman.

‘Depressingly little of it was actually our fault.’ He went on to admit- if chaos was going to occur on that scale, there was no fun in sitting back and watching it happen, he wanted to be at least a causal factor.


‘What happened?’ Lennart asked him.

‘We hadn’t even got down the gangplank before we got arrested- I’m not sure what we’re even doing planetside, it didn’t smell right to us but the admiral’s guard weren’t exactly amenable to reason. They didn’t seem to know where they were going when they got here, either.’ Aldrem began to explain, hitting a key point.

What was the purpose of landing? The only people that could want them planetside were the people down here already, none of whom were naval. Security fit- up. As long as it came from someone in authority the marine guard would fall for it.

‘We were on the ground for less than half a minute when four carloads of ISB showed up. They started arguing with the marines who refused their authority, I think the senior sargeant realised then that he had been snow jobbed because they all started pointing guns at each other. That’s when the rebs showed up and tried to hijack the shuttle.’

Interesting. So the survivors from the rear-admiral’s guard could back up his story.

‘Kriff knows what they thought they were doing there. Unregistered, unplanned flight? Maybe they were going for a bonus target, maybe they thought that using a special flight could stonewall traffic control for long enough for them to get out, they didn’t talk to us much.

Anyway, the local cops arrived on their tail, the blaster bolts started flying, and we decided it wasn’t healthy hanging around, so we grabbed the shuttle and ran for it.’

That glossed over rather a lot, including bursts of military grade automatic fire, but that the situation had been a confused clusterkriff seemed both entirely probable and depressingly normal.


The police were starting to land now, armoured speeders- as if they would stop even a DC-15 bolt, never mind light turbolaser fire- grounding as cover for the cops piling out behind them.

Three hovervans, four patrol speeders, twenty in total most with blast vests and pistols, some carbines. One sniper who rolled clear and tried to find a hide, one of the assault transport’s LTL retuned it’s targeting beam to the visual and spotted him.

One of the police officers, he noticed with exasperation, was Inspector deLante, wearing a form- fitting armoured bodyglove he was sure wasn’t supposed to be that brightly polished, a very figure- following blast breastplate, and tossing her hair and posing with her gun like something out of a cheesy holovid.

‘If this goes sour, shoot her.’ Lennart said to Aleph-3, testing her sense of humour, and called out to the police ‘It’s all right, situation under control.’ Which was optimistic at best.

After a couple of seconds, it occurred to the CorSec operatives that they were outnumbered and outgunned, and probably dealing with a lunatic. At least five, actually. Probably not the best idea to start a gunfight.

The two most senior cops- deLante and a medium sized, square built older man in tactical police armour- came forward, Lennart ambled out to meet them.


‘Special Agent Ormyn, CorSec.’ The man introduced himself. No respect for Lennart’s position and rank at all- for all that I try to refuse to stand on such things, I can’t let that one go, he thought. ‘Are you responsible for those men, are they responsible for this?’

‘Haven’t got the full story out of them myself yet, but I doubt it. They are part of my crew, and I will not allow them to be hastily accused, falsely blamed, or improperly tried.’ Which was a flat out lie, but one concerning another matter that was none of this jumped up little tinpot’s business anyway.

‘Falsely? They escape from custody in a major gun battle.’ Which did not at all impress Lennart. A major battle was one that involved at least three fleet destroyers. Which was what happened to be docked with Corellian Engineering at the moment.

‘They shot at my people- we lost five dead in that. Five murders to answer for. They crashland a stolen shuttle and start a major blaze, rig a building to collapse that put four more of my men in hospital, use some sort of microatomic on a suburban house- they are public enemies and I want them placed under-‘


‘Let’s agree to swap words.’ Lennart talked over him. ‘If you can manage to avoid using the ‘A’ word, then so can I- if you don’t have to say “arrest”, then I won’t have to say “attack”. I think that’s fair. For kriff’s sake use your brain before you get yourself hurt.’

Ormyn took that very badly. As might be expected. On the other hand, he still retained the basic common sense to not want to get into a pissing match with the best part of a platoon of stormtroopers.

‘Threatening a security officer is an offence in itself- are you willing to use armed force to defend these men?’ he said, last fling of aggression before backing down, but also trying to put the legal sting in there.

‘You’re not impressing me with your observation skills the way you keep overlooking that one of them’s a woman, unarmed force is beneath us, and ‘offensive’ would be another good word to avoid…those inaccuracies aside, of course I am.’ He added to deLante, ‘Shouldn’t you be playing good cop about now?’

‘We take the death of our colleagues very seriously.’ She said, trying to look sexily serious- but spotting the main problem, ‘Why are you prepared to go that far?’


‘Why didn’t you think to ask that?’ Lennart prodded Ormyn, then said ‘Apart from the hard legal fact that the Starfleet has a prior claim on his hide, I know Lieutenant Aldrem’s crime sheet; he’s a dangerous lunatic in many respects, but this really isn’t his style. Your version?’ he asked Pel Aldrem.

“Not his style” was blatantly wrong, it was entirely their style, but Aldrem had the sense not to say so. He did amplify his earlier thoughts. ‘The shuttle business, I think the ISB were trying to insert themselves into the process so the admiral would have to cut some kind of deal to get them to go away again.

The admiral’s guard weren’t having any of it, they were about ready to shoot at each other anyway-‘ and I was trying to figure out how to kick it off but the less mentioned about that the better, Aldrem thought.

‘That was when the rebs, must have been left over from the earlier screwup, gatecrashed the party. It was a five way fight, skipper- confusing as kriff, we didn’t see any point in hanging around.’ Aldrem admitted.


‘I can imagine. You say the ISB actually shot at the admiral’s bodyguard?’ Lennart asked, deLante at least wondering why she was being allowed to overhear all of this.

‘Who shot back, the rebs shot at them both, the marines returned fire, some stray bolts from that went into the corsec team, the rebs shot at them too, the cops shot at everybody- you know how self- righteous they can get when someone lobs a blaster bolt in their general direction.’ Aldrem said, apparently innocent of his surroundings.

‘I know how irritated the marines can get. Only five dead? It seems you got off lightly, Agent Ormyn.’ Lennart said. ‘Are you prepared to testify to that?’ he asked Aldrem.

‘I don’t know how much difference my word would make under the circumstances, skipper. It was a clusterkriff, everybody shooting at everybody else. I mean…that’s how it was, so I suppose I will stand up and say that.’ Aldrem hoped he knew where the captain was going with that, and he was right.

‘Good, you’re a witness to a capital crime involving malfeasance by the local police. No arrests today.’ Lennart beamed at Ormyn. ‘Conflict of interest and all that.’

‘My only interest,’ Ormyn growled through gritted teeth at him, ‘is in avenging my people and in seeing justice done.’ He snarled, and stomped away back to the hovercars.

‘Just as long as you don’t get the two mixed up.’ Lennart called after him, and turned to deLante ‘Now that I’ve thoroughly pissed him off, this might not be the right time to explain what you can get out of it?’


She thought about it. Decided to be just a little bit unprofessional. ‘I could probably be persuaded to listen. Over dinner?’

Ah, crap, Lennart thought. ‘Fine,’ he said offhandedly, trying not to wince internally, but if she wanted to be his friend on the inside in CorSec that did give her a certain amount of leverage.

‘Stang knows when that’ll be,’ he went on, ‘the trouble the Lieutenant was escaping from is related to another incident entirely, which- higher grade offence- does take precedence, he belongs in naval custody.’

‘An offence that the Imperial Security Bureau came out of their shell to try to do something about? Legally their jurisdiction here is limited to pan- Imperial crimes. It must have been spectacular.’ She said, looking at Aldrem- and trying to get me to boast defensively, Lennart thought. Smarter than she looks.

‘It was,’ he said simply, hoping that wouldn’t inspire her to go digging and knowing it probably would, ‘it is a mess, and if you want to look for a bright side in this, consider how much smaller the whiteshirts’ jurisdiction here could get in the wake of proof of their overreach and blundering arrogance.’

‘Ah.’ She said, sounding hungry. ‘You’ll call me?’

‘When I can.’ Lennart admitted, trying not to sound overtly unenthusiastic, and called over to the medic ‘Is Sorgn ready to be moved yet?’


‘Yes, stable.’ The red- blue armoured medic- OB176, Beth-2, stated.

‘Right, everybody back on board the flying brick.’ Lennart announced, adding to Aldrem ‘You’re going to have to explain yourself to the rear-admiral after all.’

Aldrem and most of his team looked deeply worried by that, more than they really needed to. I owe you for this, Lennart managed not to say. The gunner was still convinced that he had killed Adannan, and if the admiral thought so too, I can manage to avoid admitting that I have the force for a little while longer, Lennart thought.

Especially if I can manage to pack Aleph-3 in particular off into the wilderness for a couple of weeks. That’s time I can use, to plan, to prepare, to basically stay me for a while longer.

Maybe even long enough to work out a method to keep Rafaella safe and away from the dark side- or possibly for her to save me.

I really do owe him for that, enough that if judgement goes against him I’ve got no moral choice but to stand up and admit it anyway. I’m not going to let him take the fall…but he makes a more convincing innocent than I do at the moment. Has a better chance of avoiding it in the first place.

Can’t afford to tell him that though, because this is bad enough; kriff knows what sort of public order catastrophe he and the team could perpetrate if he realised he could count on my support.

[Vehrec]

As if things weren't complicated enough-if Lennart keeps this pattern up, the Rebels may gene-tag his entire crew as being potential double agents.

And here's a thought-That doctor with all the medical supplies might just have been part of the cell that charged the landing pad. Wouldn't that be something to laugh about?

[Thanas]

I am somehow not buying that Thrawn made the mistake of letting Aldrem and his crew being ferried outside of his control, when they are the only leverage he has. I guess this was a powerplay on his part as well.

[Darth Raptor]

Extremely minor nitpick: The Church of the Dark Side wasn't established until after Endor. Pretty weird for a necromantic cult foretelling the Emperor's return to exist while he's still alive. Also it's closely associated with COMPNOR. I suggest swapping that out for the Secret Order or the Hierarchy in general.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Mysterious are the ways of the Force...

actually, good catch. The Secret Order was what I had in mind, don't know how that got in there. Then again, that specific bit is a third hand retelling of a story that begins 'No shit, it was like this,' related in violation of security regs in a chief's mess somewhere over many beers, and Pel Aldrem's actually quite likely to get it wrong anyway.

Going back to an earlier comment about classification of personal records, probably yes; in fact, in general most personnel records should be classified to some degree, but the devil is in the details. Some things are going to be essentially public record, rank and station, rate, qualifications and decorations.

Above that, things like the precise time and circumstances of promotions, demotions, commendations and reprimands are only going to be accessible to officers within the chain of command, more classified details like participation in operations which have been declared secret, medical files, appraisals, are only going to be available to commanding officers and designated specialists- personnel and medical branch probably.

Of course, that's not really the problem. The problem is scuttlebutt, rumour, the grapevine- Thrawn is too distinctive a figure not to acquire a reputation. I'm assuming he's spent most of his career in special ops because that way he remains largely out of the public eye, sees enough action to stay sharp and isn't likely to race up the ranks as he probably would have done in regular service.

The volume of backchannel rumour emerging from that is likely to be very low, but the quality relatively high, and a former senior chief and turret commander is going to be in a good position to hear it. Some of it will be rumour control, some compete bullshit, some partially true- more accurate than most, but not completely.

And yes, at least now he knows whoever's involved in this is working through the ISB, or at least using them as a pawn. Another lead to follow up.

Crayz, that's wonderfully twisted.

Ekiqa, I don't think much of the word devastators as fighting units; I don't see how they can be as efficient as a dedicated warship, and they were thought out well before anyone started worrying about things like operational endurance, or the probability that an ISD can only run at full power for something around ten thousand seconds.

Probably the best use for them is as second line, constructing small craft for the purpose built, manned fighting ships that make up the front line; assume a World Devastator assigned as a support ship to Black Prince.

Automated support ships, programmed to act as a wolf-pack, conforming to the flagship's movements; something Strike Cruiser- sized, capable of perhaps 1E24 W output and armed accordingly, as the prime unit, smaller craft to cover them, 2-3E23 W for the next size and so on down.

Small automated 'wingmen' for the existing fighters, probably a push in the direction of gunships, a dedicated attack craft to replace the current stormtrooper and assault transports, large multigun fighters.

Adjuvants, droid or human-overseen rather than manned units to work with the existing establishment.

[fractalsponge1]

Seems to me World Devastators are silly to use as front-line warships; they are too valuable as support/industrial vessels. Forget using a few dozen on Mon Calamari; send them out and seed them of a few dozen remote star clusters with lots of useful dead planets and have them build starship components to be mass-assembled at a few shipyards. You wouldn't even need hypermatter for the devastators themselves, because energy density isn't so much of a problem when you're going to essentially have mobile refinery/factories sprawling across entire planets - just set up tons of fusion reactors that then get reprocessed when the devastator moves on to the next stripmine.

Would be extremely dangerous in the hands of, say, a Remnant force still in the fringes of the spiral arms or the satellite galaxies, maybe elements of Thrawn's original force or elements of the strategic reserve units maintained in the Deep Core. Actually, you wonder why the Remnant proper didn't try this; surely the ability to build the devastators weren't lost at Calamari? With a bit of time, some seclusion, and a little bit of luck in not being found, you could have the non-living components of a fleet to dominate the galaxy, again, assuming you had the manpower and the willingness to unleash that kind of exponential weapon production. Like the wildcat Outer Rim CIS weapon factories only producing better equipment for living operators. Probably massive political problems with memories of the Clone Wars and such, but whatever - you get to rewrite the books when you win anyway.

Anyways, very enjoyable update, but the politics and private maneuvering are making my head spin; space combat is so much more straightforward . But as a serious caution though, you might want to watch that it not get too convoluted, otherwise Lennart will start looking like the all-knowing Palpatine...

[Illuminatus Primus]

The only fix I can come up with is that the WD deployment on Dac was purely a political terror operation; and the NRDF after recapturing the battlespace around Dac was dallying with evacuation efforts and trying to wear them down with light weapons and ground forces by fatigue, being unwilling to simply shell them with full broadsides from orbit, and roast continents. What makes you think self-replicating industrial and manufacturing tech is so limited?

[Ekiqa]

Ekiqa, I don't think much of the word devastators as fighting units; I don't see how they can be as efficient as a dedicated warship, and they were thought out well before anyone started worrying about things like operational endurance, or the probability that an ISD can only run at full power for something around ten thousand seconds.

Probably the best use for them is as second line, constructing small craft for the purpose built, manned fighting ships that make up the front line; assume a World Devastator assigned as a support ship to Black Prince.

Automated support ships, programmed to act as a wolf-pack, conforming to the flagship's movements; something Strike Cruiser- sized, capable of perhaps 1E24 W output and armed accordingly, as the prime unit, smaller craft to cover them, 2-3E23 W for the next size and so on down.

Small automated 'wingmen' for the existing fighters, probably a push in the direction of gunships, a dedicated attack craft to replace the current stormtrooper and assault transports, large multigun fighters.

Adjuvants, droid or human-overseen rather than manned units to work with the existing establishment.

I'd always thought it would be an effective force multiplyer to have droid fighters as tight wingmen, using small fighters, like the droid Tri-fighters of the CIS.

And apparently, the WD's are able to "grow" as they "mature", adding bits on, enlarging the internal factory, and what not. Could it not build up a warship around it? Like a Bellator? I do like the large support ships. They would need to be close to their mother ship, and have powerful communications, to combat jamming. You could have specialized escorts- anti-fighter, -ship, etc... Would probably have to come from Morannon though, once he gets his hands on a WD after Endor...

[fractalsponge1]

The only fix I can come up with is that the WD deployment on Dac was purely a political terror operation; and the NRDF after recapturing the battlespace around Dac was dallying with evacuation efforts and trying to wear them down with light weapons and ground forces by fatigue, being unwilling to simply shell them with full broadsides from orbit, and roast continents. What makes you think self-replicating industrial and manufacturing tech is so limited?

I never said it was limited; just curious why, when such a system had been developed and deployed, it wasn't fielded to its full industrial potential. Aside from sloppy writing.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I'm working on the crossover track at the moment, it might be a couple of weeks before I have another chapter to put up, so I'll just speak to this now before it falls too far down the page.

Self- replicating, self- managing resource extraction and processing machinery would be extremely destabilising; so much so that I can't see how the transition to a post- scarcity economy could be safely managed.

For a start, who gets paid, from these things' operation? Anybody? Who do the owners and operators answer to? Do they use the cheap output of the autofactories to buy political power, upsetting the present system- or undermine others' economic power, upsetting the present system?

Remember how shocked Threepio was in AOTC, to see droids constructing droids?

Assume this happened, sometime in the deep past of the Republic; and the republic probably barely survived. It's obvious that self replicating manufacturing machinery is a bad thing, and the more actual consequences it has, the easier it is to demonise.

I submit that what fits the evidence is a long, probably generational campaign of propaganda aimed at putting these things beyond the pale, harping on the loss of jobs, the dangers of concentration of power and the potential military power that could arise, the unanswerability of the private property of a private citizen- especially with examples like the Star Forge, there could be a real and rational concern.

Something like gun control in 17th-19th century Japan, for a good example of how and why. My theory here is that Von Neumann machinery was reduced to the status of the unthinkable, so much so that only people prepared to think boldly and creatively beyond the norms of society on a routine basis, like Palpatine, would even consider it.

Even then, the Neimoidians, who used droid construction to achieve economic and military power far out of proportion with their demographic standing, would have made it politically ifficult to be caught sponsoring such a thing.

There are hints to the contrary, I forget precisely where- I know it's something Publius cited but I'm damned if I can remember it, something from Planets of the Galaxy, I think, droid manned mining overseen by precisely one human supervisor.

Also in the Imperial Sourcebook (damn, we need a post- Dr. Saxton version of that, with proper times, distances, demographics, speeds and yields, so badly), p.99 states that Army Corps headquarters include detachments of mining and foundry droids, making them capable of operating without resupply indefinitely- looks like the same thing on a smaller scale.

So, essentially, self replicating industrial machinery gets looked on by the galaxy as a whole with about the same fondness Greenpeace approaches nuclear reactor construction, the authority of the Empire makes it possible for some state- sanctioned use of such things, and in the chaos after Endor all bets are off from the Imperial point of view, but the New Republic still has the old (ir?) rational fear. Does that make sense as a theory?

Mirannon is having too much fun to realise he's gone that far, really.

And, yes, I have no intention of letting Lennart fall into that trap if I can avoid it- but he is an ex anarchist, an ex politics student, and has the instincts- some of them distinctly quixotic- that implies. Also, his horizon isn't that far away, he's only thinking a couple of moves ahead- essentially making it up as he goes along.

[Singular Quartet]

The thing about droid-manned self-replication, is you run into societies like Iain M. Banks' Culture, where everything is run by hyper-intelligent machine intelligences that act as ships, space stations, etc. etc. There is no economy, because there's no jobs, because food is grown by the machines for the benefit of the humans, and near every whim (not need, whim) of humanity is met by its new robotic... equals, I suppose. The machines run the overall interactions with other governments, but if you want something that would truly terrify the Imperials (whether these imperials, or the Imperials of the Imperium of Man) you'd introduce the Culture.

Or the droids hold a robot revolution and everything goes to hell.

[Ekiqa]

Remember how shocked Threepio was in AOTC, to see droids constructing droids?

I'm not sure Threepio's comment can be taken as evidence of galactic production. He was, after all, assembled by Anakin.

Hell, we use robots for manufacturing now. Automation is something that is welcomed by factory owners, as it reduces labour costs.

I can't see anything BUT automated manufacturing for everything but the most high end of luxury items.

There's a simple way of avoiding droids becoming uppity and taking over. Regular mind-wipes, use very simple processors and brains for all but those that really need the ability, oversight of production, and hardware programming that prevents droids from revolting and such.

Wasn't there a factory planet that was entirely populated by droids?

[Publius]

"Therefore I Am: The Tale of IG-88" (Tales of the Bounty Hunters) states that "over the centuries numerous manufacturing planets had developed to fill the ever-growing demand for gigantic construction droids, heavy laborers, mechanical servants, and minuscule surveillance droids," and that "the most important of all such droid production centers was the grim, smoke-laden world of Mechis III." The global defense network was primarily computer-controlled, with "few human operators," and the narrative describes the level of actual input of the minimal sapient staff on site:

A career worker on Mechis III, Kalebb Orn had never understood why a human presence was required here, of all places. It seemed to serve no purpose. The droid manufacturing lines had gone without a glitch for at least the last century, but still company mandates required a human operator in some small percentage of the operations. Such as this one, chosen at random.

Kalebb Orn watched the big robotic crane arms moving, ratcheting from side to side and picking up heavy components with grasping electromagnetic claws. Everything from sheet metal and bulky armor plate to precise microchip motivators emerged from other parts of the kilometers-long facility, endlessly manufactured to never-changing specifications.

The self-designing assembly lines had grown so vast over centuries of operation, with new subsystems added, old ones enhanced, new models introduced into the production schedules and old obsolete versions phased out. Kalebb Orn did not have the mental capacity to comprehend all the manufacturing systems on Mechis III. He wasn't sure anyone did.

It goes on to add:

Though operations on Mechis III virtually never changed, and every day the afternoon report listed the same production numbers, the same lists of quotas fulfilled, the same quantities of droids shipped, Administrator Hekis looked at each report with a studied interest. He took his job very seriously. It weighed heavy on a man to know that he lorded over one of the most important commercial centers in the industrialized galaxy -- even if he was only one of seventy-three humans on the entire planet.

In The New Rebellion, Brakiss was able to operate the automated factories on the moon of Telti unaided by any other sapient being, which allowing for differences of scale provides a convenient comparison to operations on Mechis III. It would appear that sapient oversight of manufacturing is largely perfunctory; C-3PO's comment in Attack of the Clones seems to be more ironical than an actual indicator of novelty.

[Thanas]

"Therefore I Am: The Tale of IG-88" (Tales of the Bounty Hunters)

Isn't that one non-canon?

[Crayz9000]

The existence of Mechis III was reconfirmed in the Young Jedi Knights series, which unless I'm mistaken is most definitely a part of the greater EU.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Self- replicating, self- managing resource extraction and processing machinery would be extremely destabilising; so much so that I can't see how the transition to a post- scarcity economy could be safely managed.

For a start, who gets paid, from these things' operation? Anybody? Who do the owners and operators answer to? Do they use the cheap output of the autofactories to buy political power, upsetting the present system- or undermine others' economic power, upsetting the present system?

Remember how shocked Threepio was in AOTC, to see droids constructing droids?

Assume this happened, sometime in the deep past of the Republic; and the republic probably barely survived. It's obvious that self replicating manufacturing machinery is a bad thing, and the more actual consequences it has, the easier it is to demonise.

I submit that what fits the evidence is a long, probably generational campaign of propaganda aimed at putting these things beyond the pale, harping on the loss of jobs, the dangers of concentration of power and the potential military power that could arise, the unanswerability of the private property of a private citizen- especially with examples like the Star Forge, there could be a real and rational concern.

Something like gun control in 17th-19th century Japan, for a good example of how and why. My theory here is that Von Neumann machinery was reduced to the status of the unthinkable, so much so that only people prepared to think boldly and creatively beyond the norms of society on a routine basis, like Palpatine, would even consider it.

Even then, the Neimoidians, who used droid construction to achieve economic and military power far out of proportion with their demographic standing, would have made it politically ifficult to be caught sponsoring such a thing.

There are hints to the contrary, I forget precisely where- I know it's something Publius cited but I'm damned if I can remember it, something from Planets of the Galaxy, I think, droid manned mining overseen by precisely one human supervisor.

Also in the Imperial Sourcebook (damn, we need a post- Dr. Saxton version of that, with proper times, distances, demographics, speeds and yields, so badly), p.99 states that Army Corps headquarters include detachments of mining and foundry droids, making them capable of operating without resupply indefinitely- looks like the same thing on a smaller scale.

So, essentially, self replicating industrial machinery gets looked on by the galaxy as a whole with about the same fondness Greenpeace approaches nuclear reactor construction, the authority of the Empire makes it possible for some state- sanctioned use of such things, and in the chaos after Endor all bets are off from the Imperial point of view, but the New Republic still has the old (ir?) rational fear. Does that make sense as a theory?
...

What Publius says. There's no doubt they do employ these techniques and manufacturing technologies. SW is just much more complicated and big than most authors give it credit for. And I just treat these intractable issues from a modern economics perspective somewhat as a black box (the galaxy over the very long term is a steady-state economy and population - anyone want to tell me how that works in a starfaring post-industrial Von Nuemann-using civilization using superficially quasi-modern political forms?). I don't think that they can and do can be disputed. How it fits into a coherent big picture is what is not understood.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Many apologies, I have been away for far too long, finally got a new chapter ready to go. There are no droids in it.



Hull 721 arc 2 ch 8

It was most emphatically not the done thing, Thrawn thought with some disgruntlement, for a senior officer to share the danger of his men. That was not how leadership was supposed to be done in the Imperial Starfleet.

It sat ill at ease with him- the Chiss expansionary defence forces had believed in leadership from the front, it was the school he had grown up in, had had to prove his worth through, and in it’s own way it was a sounder and more practical method.

The junior officers that lasted long enough to become senior officers, who survived the necessity to show heroic leadership, were the ones who had turned out to be good at it- or at least had managed to learn when and why to duck.

Whereas the Imperial Starfleet’s senior leadership…there were times when he was not unhappy to still be only a rear-admiral, if it meant not being associated with them.

Perhaps on this one occasion, leading from the rear had it’s advantages. It would be terribly unseemly to be caught leading, in person, a raid on an Imperial Security Bureau headquarters. Enjoyable perhaps, but unseemly.


It would have been better if he had hired mercenaries, had time to vet them for reliability and check their contacts, but that simply hadn’t been an option. A raid by a crack “rebel” commando team- unarmoured Stormtroopers- could be organised in time, and explained away as part of the ongoing chaos.

At least it had been a technically interesting bombing- semi-binary chemical, with a main active compound that had been rendered inert with a binder, than was activated again by introducing a solvent it bound to more readily than it did to the main compound.

If the chemical engineering was done sufficiently well, the binder and solvent could produce some interesting and hopefully synergistic effects in their own right.

It was also unseemly to laugh oneself silly over the holocorded results of the field interrogations carried out while the building was supposed to be under lockdown. Not that he would have, but the temptation was there.


The compounds chosen and sprayed into the building, accompanied by a slice to disable the air conditioning and filters, had been a mix of Bavo Six- one of the standard ISB truth drugs- and the binder/solvent pair oxidised into a street drug more commonly known as ‘the fear’.

It made the victim feel as if they were being chased, something was close behind them and running after them, they needed to flee for their lives- it induced paranoia and adrenalin. That produced interesting effects when combined with a truth drug.

The chief disadvantage of the operation was that it seemed, on the whole, to be rather too professional and well planned to be the work of rebels. He had decided to live with that on the grounds that there seemed to be quite a high proportion of professionals among their ranks, who were presumably competent.

Actually, a worryingly high proportion of them had turned out to be medical in some way or other. Did their duty of care, their vocation to heal and save life, lead to a potentially disloyal degree of liberalism?

No matter, they had the biochemical expertise to make it possible- and Bavo Six in it’s more recent forms did have slight amnesiac slide effects, which were encouraged. The victim seldom knew exactly what it was they had given away, was frequently wracked with guilt and confusion trying to work out exactly who they had betrayed- paths a clever interrogator could work along.

There was no possibility of borrowing some of Black Prince’s marines, but his own guard contained the required talents. He had only had time to skim through a few of the holorecordings, but they promised to be most instructive and informative.


That was something that could be done in a moment; for now he had an interrogation of his own to conduct. Standing in front of his desk was Lieutenant-by-the-grace-of-kriff-knows-what Aldrem, still in his multicoloured, sensibility- offending holiday shirt and enlisted uniform jacket with lieutenant’s rank squares pinned to it.

The rest of the team had been confined to guest quarters on the station, where they were too far away from here to be able to rescue him, and not among their own people where who knew what lunatic scheme could be hatched.

‘Lieutenant, you certainly seem to have lived in interesting times, have you not? I scarcely know where to require you to begin explaining yourself. You may commence at the opening phase of the incident.’

No wonder I frequently end up on the carpet, Aldrem thought, can’t keep my mouth shut- and the tension of the moment was driving him towards the silly. The last refuge of the doomed, in other words. He had to fight down a mad impulse to open with ‘Well, I was born in a log cabin-‘


He did decide to skip over the first clash, the first handful of clashes, and the staged defection. ‘As soon as Kor Alric arrived on board we knew there was going to be a problem. It was all over the ship in minutes, how he and the skipper had managed to get off on the wrong foot- and with how he threw his weight around with the civil power, we just knew something ugly was going to happen.’

That wasn’t really a surprise, but it was welcome confirmation. If there had been bad blood from the start, and so obvious that even the crew had noticed it, that diminished the possibility of collusion- and increased the possibility of premeditation.

‘This is a military tribunal, Lieutenant- you are required to be truthful and accurate.’ Thrawn reminded him, because he thought it was the sort of goad that would get a response from the junior officer. ‘Exactly when do you, personally, enter the picture?’

Ah, kriff, Aldrem thought, trying to think quickly enough that it wasn’t obvious that was what he was doing. What were the objectives? Protect Jhareylia- although there wasn’t all that much wiggle room that he could see, not much room for credible dressing up of the situation.


‘A sort of order, from the captain personally- my turret team was stood down because of a malfunction,‘ dammit, that was obviously not true- ‘and we’d recently been put through surface combat and survival refresher training, so-‘

As he had expected, the rear-admiral picked up on that. ‘Malfunction? You destroyed two of your gun barrels.’ He expected a certain degree of wriggling and evasion, but this was silly. He looked through the datapads for the incident- and tried not to react to the details when he did.

‘Attempting to simulate a continuous cutting beam from a pulse weapon barrel, and apparently succeeding.’ So the truth really was that absurd. No mean player of bureaucratic tricks himself, he had recognised that Aldrem’s miserable disciplinary record was largely an excuse to retain him on board.


Time, kriff it. He could dictate the pace of the enquiry, make it move as fast or as slowly as suited him, but the circumstances- the external threat, the still not sufficiently validated conspiracy, were applying pressures of their own.

Aldrem’s record- as so many others- would reward closer analysis, if there was only sufficient time. How to force the enemy to give it to him? Start by identifying the enemy.

Running here had been a good move on Lennart’s part, made sweeter by the fact that it was entirely plausible. Corellia was a form of legal limbo, running closely in parallel to the Empire but not exactly of it. If a major move was made against them, the repercussions would be immense.

If Pel Aldrem’s crime sheet was designed to keep him on board- discount that and what was left was one of the most talented gunners in the fleet. Include it, and you had an established behaviour pattern that could make the most lunatic moves seem nothing out of the ordinary. ‘Carry on.’ Thrawn ordered him to continue.


Again Aldrem had to stop himself from saying something stupid- ‘We usually do, Sir’ hovered on the tip of his tongue. Wouldn’t have been wise. That and he couldn’t come up with a convincing lie. Maybe make the truth look slightly less catastrophic.

‘We were asked to go and talk to his staff. Make smalltalk with the minions. See if we could get them to open up a little.’ Aldrem lied, fairly smoothly he thought, but it wasn’t enough to fool the rear-admiral.

‘Only communicate? Not, for instance, abduct and put to the question?’

Kriff, I’m not going to get away with this anyway, Aldrem thought. ‘He’d already mutilated one of the junior officers, the algae-stirrer in charge of the enviro team reconditioning the Imperial suite.

That’s not much of a recommendation- the enviro team tend to be the goits that even the rest of the black hole gang can’t put up with- but he was still one of the crew.

That and the way Adannan was throwing his weight around- the impression we got was that at the very least, he was here to steal the credit, middle case he was here to organise the coverup, worst case he was representing a rival scam.’ Aldrem said, and Thrawn scented opportunity- if he could get the man to get carried away with his tale.


‘Who, in this context, is ‘we’, exactly?’ he asked.

‘The lower deck.’ Aldrem admitted. ‘The general population of working stiffs who almost never actually get told what’s going on and have to resort to rumour and scuttlebutt.’ Which was less than the whole truth on this ship, but not far away from Starfleet policy in general.

‘Which is unusually active on this ship.’ The rear-admiral made it a statement, inviting Aldrem to argue with it, which he did.

‘How are you supposed to use your own judgement if you have no information to judge with? Classification’s all well and good in theory, but when you’re not allowed to know what’s going on, how are you supposed to react effectively?’

‘You were a senior non-commissioned officer at the time; why were you in a situation where you had to use your own judgement?’

‘I’m a turret commander- I do need to know. Against multiple small targets, enemy merchantmen, corvettes and frigates, surface targets, we assign fire sectors and shoot from local control. I have to prioritise.’ Aldrem said.


‘Really? Interesting. That was the clone wars doctrine, with clone gun crews of unshakeable probity. It is not the official doctrine of the Imperial Starfleet, which reserves those decisions to higher command.’ Thrawn pointed out.

‘See? If I’d been allowed to know that I wouldn’t have said so.’ Aldrem pointed out, trying to turn it into something more creative and proactive than a straightforward ‘oops’.

‘You are also not supposed to abduct and interrogate the staff of an officer of the privy council.’ Thrawn challenged– he had no actual knowledge that that was what had happened, but it seemed all too likely at this stage.

‘Staff? Look, if they were his staff, they were the kind you get on really primitive worlds, in the privy- that part at least is right- with the sponge on the end.’ Aldrem’s body language changed; he accepted that there was no way he was going to be able to conceal the truth, and was going to have to resort to riding it and seeing how far he got.

‘A tribunal would say,’ Thrawn said neutrally, ‘that given your record of leading your team into one disaster after another, you are the last person with latitude to criticise anyone’s man management skills.’

‘And out again- and I’ve never tried to use them as pawns to overthrow the Empire.’


Considering the precise part of the ship he had blown up, his actions could be interpreted as lese-majeste at least, at worst a dry run for exactly that- Thrawn wondered if that had occurred to anyone in the conspiracy. Ah. Perhaps that was what the ISB team were there for. ‘Carry on.’

‘We found two of his minions, a pair of Twi’lek slaves- look, the evil bastard kept them as pets.’ Aldrem said, increasingly angry- in retrospect, at the time they had been too busy figuring out how the kriff to pull it off to be morally outraged.

‘Tortured them with pain and fried their brains until they worshipped him as the sum total of their kriffed up world, we found that out when we tried to set them free- you know what?’ An idea occurred to him. ‘I’d like to be tried for that.

See if you can come up with a charge, he behaved as if the rules didn’t apply to him, you’re not supposed to keep people as property- find a charge, put me up on the stand, we’ll see if any tribunal with three brain cells to rub together is still willing to convict after we’ve had a chance to give them chapter and verse on what a vicious shit he was.’


Aldrem actually surprised himself with his own anger- but following behind it was the sick, sinking feeling that the power structure, the authorities, the mysterious them that Adannan belonged to almost certainly would forgive him anything, no matter how twisted.

At some point in the past, Mitth’raw’nuruodo reminded himself, I was prepared to do crazy things like that, in the name of what I saw was right. Landed myself in exile as a result- a high price but it needed to be done. When did I turn from that, into the sort of moral vacuum it becomes other people’s duty to stop at any cost?

Whenever it was, precisely, it must have seemed like a good idea at the time. No matter. First, do the business of the day. ‘So you were already convinced that Adannan was, as you say, evil-‘ he managed to make the very concept sound faintly ridiculous and outmoded- ‘-and needed to be acted against accordingly?’

‘Me and almost the entire crew except some of the spannerheads, it’s difficult to get them to come out of their ductwork and take notice- but I don’t think anyone was remotely surprised when the captain accused him.’ Aldrem said. ‘Do something against, I think the feeling was in the wind- this is rumour- there was the sense that he had something in mind anyway.’


‘You were detached from your ship- and promoted- to serve as an instructor officer on another unit of the squadron, what was their opinion?’ Thrawn probed. That was interesting; the general belief on the lower deck was that Lennart had been due to try to kill Adannan anyway.

‘Too lost in their own miseries to have one.’ Aldrem described. ‘They should never have been committed to combat. Most of them should have been sacked years ago.’

That was another interesting fact. The junior officer’s anger at the unprofessionalism of the crew of the Dynamic- why had Lennart chose to attach that ship to the squadron?

Excessive faith in his own former exec? Possible- perhaps he simply had not comprehended how disastrous things really were. However- faith to do what? He must have known- been able to observe- how poorly the crew could handle the ship, that Dynamic was a liability in any kind of combat.


Therefore there was another factor at work. Only a mad conspiracy theorist could claim that Dordd’s ship had been retained as part of the squadron in order to provide Aldrem with a suitable firing platform, that Lennart had known what was going to happen that far ahead of time, but the universe was not free of conspiracy theorists.

On his reading of the man, he was an improviser, perfectly capable of coming up with something like that, but he had too much else to think about- he was a better planner than he liked his record to show, but that was too much to expect even for him, he wouldn’t have not until the last moment.

The probability was that things had shaken out as they actually appeared to have, that Lennart had been overoptimistic about his own man’s ability to get a worthwhile performance out of Dynamic’s crew, had realised that too late to backtrack and dispatched one of his best gunners to try to lick them into shape, and Aldrem had been responsible for the rest.

‘The rest of the squadron?’

‘Ah, I think the timing- they had been assembled on Kor Alric’s warrant, not really on navy instructions at all, and I don’t think anything could be done until the main fight was over. The skipper picked them as closely as he could, but- and I think Kor Alric knew that too. If he had the force, he must have known.’ Aldrem said, somewhat incoherently- but point taken.


At this point, the rear-admiral thought, I should be looking for some method of having Aldrem neatly and efficiently condemned, and transferred to a penal legion under my command. May yet happen.

‘To be blunt, Lieutenant, your skills make you dangerous to the Imperial State. The moral why you took that shot is- as clear as any matter of morals ever is; but as a practical matter-‘ He decided to see what the madman would be able to work out for himself.

‘Well, I did blow up the Imperial Suite. As far as defacing symbols of the empire goes, that’s a biggie. If somebody really wanted to, ah crap. Hold on a minute. The ISB are in on this? The head-breaking, street level arm of the New Order Party is trying to kill the Emperor?’ Aldrem put two and two together.

Obviously to genius near allied, Thrawn thought sourly. ‘There was an interesting leap of logic in there, Lieutenant, that I would like you to spell out for me. Oh, and do you have any obvious hostages to fortune?’

‘The ISB wanted me and the team because they thought- or whoever was jerking their chain thought- we could repeat the trick for them. There are maybe, well, Commander Wathavrah used to be pretty good, not Ardel, he died with the Death Star, not- who are we kidding? It’d take at least a Venator to duplicate that shot.

Aiming on, converging on a pin point, that’s not the issue, but you need the firepower. The resonances work better with a few big hits, I don’t think I could get a clean hit with an octuple 32. Certainly not with the pathetic popguns on any ISB operations ship. You’re looking for someone who doesn’t know war, doesn’t know the tools of the trade.’

Thrawn wasn’t going to start speculating in front of the mad gunman, but that fitted. Unfortunately, it didn’t narrow the field down very much. Also, there was another minor problem Aldrem wasn’t thinking through.

‘Proving that you were correct in destroying him, that he was indeed an enemy of the empire and you were obeying the higher order, is going to be effectively impossible.’ He pointed out. ‘In destroying the Imperial Suite, you destroyed the evidence that could have confirmed your opinion of him.’

‘The possibility crossed my mind at the time, but I went with the lesser evil.’ Aldrem admitted. ‘We would be so comprehensively screwed anyway if he had won, not much in it.’


A light touch, the admiral decided. He had an objective now, a goal that could be credibly served; how to prevent Aldrem from becoming aware of it? Formally, right now, he ought to be jailed pending court martial. How to spin that so that he would deliver what I want, Thrawn thought.

‘In that at least, Lieutenant, you are correct. By the book, there exists no alternative but to have you held for court martial, there is insufficient evidence for any other option.’ Hint without being too heavy handed, because if, for instance, Lennart had stolen and copied sufficient of Adannan’s private papers to show the cause, enough for a real indictment…

The probability of Lennart showing them to him was infinitesimal. Unlikely that threatening Aldrem would force that kind of confession. However, if there was a way to pressure his team to find what the rear-admiral was after, this was it.

It must be of importance, he thought. Lennart has more sense than it appears from his record; he’s managed not to cross the line into open rebellion, despite provocations, before now. What was so desperate that he was prepare to take risks like that, to break one of his followers, to prevent?


And time to apply the sting. ‘The rest of your turret team who were with you-‘

‘I was responsible. I gave the orders, they just obeyed them, I set that shot up and took the decision to fire, I abused their trust and acted before they could stop me, they just obeyed orders, they’re technically innocent.’ Aldrem said, and Thrawn thanked years of practise at remaining stone faced.

That couldn’t have worked out more effectively if he had planned it. Which he had. Not good to be too forgiving, though, not at this stage. ‘That is a matter for the court to decide. Personally I find it improbable that a team as close knit as yours would have no idea what you were about to do, but…pending the outcome of your case, they will remain under open arrest for the moment.’

He couldn’t have put it more plainly if he had flat out told the lieutenant what he wanted his team to do; use their contacts and inside access for him, get hold of the copies of Adannan’s private papers he was sure Lennart had. Their necks, and his, depended on it.

Just necessary to seem ruthless enough to carry out that threat and have them all slowly and painfully executed for lese majeste; and yet open enough to reason that genuine evidence could turn the scales. From the look on Aldrem’s face- contained determination- as he was led out, the rear admiral thought he had got it just right.



‘You look like crap.’ Both the engineers said. They were down just below Main Machinery-2, in the shielded and sealable control booth of one of the main heat sink panels, nice and out of the way.

‘Thank you for that resounding vote of confidence.’ Lennart said, trying to be sarcastic, but mainly managing tired.

‘Seriosuly, skipper, I know you’re arguing for your life, but-‘ Mirannon added.

‘If that was all, I’d be fine. It’s having to get it right on someone else’s behalf, having to not let them down that takes it out of you. I hear you tried to cook the Admiral?’

‘I don’t really want to sample his biochemistry. Lot of interesting chemicals bubbling in his brain, must do a diffraction on some of them sometime- and besides, he’s in a perfect position to get revenge, he’s grilling that mad pet gunner of yours now.’ Mirannon said.

‘I know, I expected that. If there was time to set it up properly-‘ Lennart said not entirely coherent, stopping himself saying too much.

Mirannon gave him a meaningful look, then eyes darting at Caldor, signalling, can we trust him?

Interesting question, actually. ‘Goran, how much of a Corellian patriot are you these days?’ Lennart asked.

“Dealing with the state bureaucracy is the surest antidote for patriotism known to man.” Caldor quoted. ‘Corellia and Corellian Engineering are joined at the hip anyway, and having to lean on the admin department to get paid on time and in full gets old fast. As soon as they have you pegged as being prepared to make sacrifices for the greater good, they start expecting you to.’

‘Yes. We fight for the empire we dream of, not the empire we know…’ The words were right, but they were also predictable. Not sufficient proof. ‘There are too many players in this already. I’d prefer if the Diktat kept their noses out of this, but telling them that, well, counterproductive. Patriotic urges to keep them informed wouldn’t help.’


‘There may be brownie points to score with Coruscant, they’re probably going to lean on me. On the other hand, I have this objection to informing. Spreading the word among the people, though-‘ Caldor grinned evilly.

‘You know, that’s an interesting idea.’ Lennart said. Not all of it, not enough to get anyone into trouble for knowing too much of the truth- well, we can always get a few journos killed, they’re expendable- but some popular attention might work to the advantage of truth, justice and the Corellian way.’

‘Hold on, you’re not serious, skipper? The situation isn’t bad enough, you want to throw reporters at it to see if it explodes?’ Mirannon said. It looked like bad social engineering, an extra uncontrolled variable, as well as verging on the barking kriffing mad. ‘Besides, the least media proof people in the whole business are probably us.’

‘Point.’ Lennart admitted. ‘I suppose I was just getting over- optimistic thinking about force choked journalists.’

‘Well, you told me some of it already,’ Caldor said, ‘like blowing up your political officer. It gets worse?’


‘Oh, yes. Well, that depends on your definition spectrum,’ Mirannon said, ‘but by mine, yes.’

‘CorSec have already been bending my ear.’ Caldor admitted. ‘With the general ambient chaos around here, they’re definitely interested.’

‘Chopsticks?’ Mirannon suggested, meaning that it was going to be easier to manipulate the Corellian government’s reactions if they had more than one avenue of approach. There was little that could be done with one chopstick, two were at least two squared times as useful.

‘Just who are you plotting to get into trouble?’ Caldor asked.

‘Me, probably.’ Lennart admitted, ‘but I think we can contain the damage to those genuinely deserving of being damaged. You don’t think I had the political officer killed just for being a political officer, do you?’

‘If you had managed to make it look like an accident, I’d have said yes.’ Caldor admitted. ‘Actually and openly doing him in, that was something else. Did things go sour that fast?’


‘He had the dark side of the force. People like that only die in very carefully arranged accidents.’ Lennart said. ‘Before you ask, yes, the service has warped me and deranged my morals, but not so much that I can’t recognise a monster when I see one. Remember what we used to think about the Jedi?’

Caldor visibly thought about it; expressing any kind of support for the old jedi order was an anti- imperial act worth the execution booth, but which way was the wind blowing here?

‘We used to think they were part of the problem, didn’t we? Amoral, asocial, apathetic, for refusing to use their powers for good they were at best guilty of criminal negligence, at worst actively complicit in the downfall of the republic.’ It was a reasonably unobjectionable statement to make to a serving Imperial officer.

‘We must have been far ahead of our time, to think that ten years before it actually happened.’ Lennart pointed out. He could understand his old flatmate’s caution, but that really wasn’t the issue.

‘All right, maybe I’m looking forward a little, but we definitely thought the negligence part though. I don’t think we thought anything much about the other lot.’ Caldor said. ‘I think we thought they were some kind of false-flag operation by the jedi to justify themselves, or just some kind of private obsession.’

‘They were the largest and best organised body of followers of the dark side.’ Lennart pointed out. ‘They were definitely worse, if active evil is worse than passive.’


‘So, one of them- more than one? A conclave, a cell, what?’

‘At least one of the privy council, somebody in compnor, probably a few in the ranks of the ubiqtorate, the minimal oversight, unelected advisory positions- I know, they’re all unelected now- oh, and Lord Darth Vader.’ Lennart pointed out.

‘Really? Right, let me see if I can still do wierdass conspiracy theory.’ Caldor started. ‘This gang of lunatics, the spiff-‘

‘Sith.’ Mirannon corrected. ‘Like the noise made by a hissing viper.’

‘Right. They’re trying to, what, how melodramatic do you want me to be? Overthrow the Imperial state, kill the Emperor? On general principles, they sound exactly the sort of thing a bunch of student anarchists would actually approve of- or would they actually be worse?’ Caldor asked.

‘Probably. If you remember at the time, the jedi thought that these dark side cultists were in close with the separatist leadership.’ Lennart gave his old flatmate a very partial version of the truth, and Mirannon’s eyebrows registered the fact in several interesting ways- trying not to go too far, but he obviously thought a co- conspirator deserved better.

‘What, the whole secret cabal nonsense that crops up at least once a generation? You’re telling me there actually was something real amongst the gibberish?’

‘You can go and tell Vader he’s imaginary, if you like.’ Mirannon said. ‘Personally, I wouldn’t.’


‘That touches on personality politics, I know it’s the age we live in but I’ve never liked the concept; Vader changed his allegiance as the Jedi prepared for the cloister coup, defected from the light to the dark side, and for some reason, the sith followed him into the service of what was in hindsight fairly obviously about to become the empire.’ Lennart said, a mixture of half-truth and guess.

Caldor paused for a second trying to take it in, and failed. ‘This is…this really is Galactic Enquirer material, it’s barking kriffing mad. Secret cults with mystic powers conspiring to overthrow the state? Pull the other one, it’s got strain gauges on.’

‘You didn’t meet the despicable bastard.’ Lennart said. ‘It would be better if you were right, but these are melodramatic times we live in. Sometimes people really do conspire, and, surprisingly enough, mystic nutcases tend to conspire more than normal people.’

‘Well,’ Caldor said, obviously humouring him, ‘I suppose I can reserve judgement on how badly you’ve flipped until some more of the facts are in. Where do I come into this, anyway?’

‘Depends how deeply you want to drag Corellia into this.’ Lennart said. ‘Place always did have more than it’s fair share of jedi, didn’t it? Same with Coruscant, the old, long inhabited worlds produce a greater share of the galaxy’s force users than they have any statistical right to, I wonder what the causal factor is?

Anyway…to be honest, I reckon that we intercepted a very long shot, a wild stab at glory. The basic plan was straightforward enough; the place where we collected our dents was a rebel fleet base, the kind the local force units have to be complicit or really spectacularly incompetent to let them have.

Expose the local government’s cockups, discredit the sector authority, I have no doubt he would have done it either way but at least they actually were guilty enough to deserve it, use us to deal with the problem, be the obvious candidate for replacement Moff, sit back, reap rewards.

So far, so legitimate, actually. It was the private wrinkles of his own that he added that pushed the plan into outright treason, and he would have got away with it too, if we hadn’t exploded him.’


‘Right. Assuming that this is all true- and I’m just assuming that at the moment, because I want time to work up to something this twisted- where does the Rear-Admiral of the Blue fit in?’ Caldor asked, trying to fit the pieces together.

‘Does he have any ties to the cult, you mean? Interesting question, but basically, I don’t think so. He’s done some remarkably dubious things if all the rumours about him are true, and probably even if they aren’t. He’s still a rear-admiral, though.

For kriff’s sake, I was court martialled on what was theoretically a death penalty offence and I still made Captain eventually; he’s only two steps above me. He is a player, but what rules he’s playing by and whose agenda he’s following, couldn’t tell you. He’s not part of any recognised faction, probably why he’s still where he is. He’s about as close as we could get to an honest investigator.’


‘You make it sound like that was a bad thing.’ Caldor said.

‘Remember the contempt we used to pour on the genial art of corruption?’ Lennart reminded him.

‘We were wrong, a bit.’ The yard engineer admitted. There were definitely practical uses to a little judicious corruption.

‘A dishonest agenda-server, an acolyte even, I might be able to manipulate, there would be angles I could exploit. Him? What do I bribe him with?’ Lennart asked, rhetorically.

‘The truth is unlikely to work, then?’ Caldor asked.

‘Well…that’s the stang of it, it might. The truth is, shall we say, interpretable, and figuring out what version of it he’s prepared to accept could be dangerous in itself. My problem, though, so leave it to me.’ Lennart said, with more confidence than he felt. ‘The other side of it is the Diktat, who have probably already been pumping you for information?’


‘Not officially, as who should say official. Mostly tactical-technical, and I haven’t quite figured out what to tell them yet; you are aware that you have done at least five impossible things to this ship?’ Caldor said.

‘You should know better. If it’s impossible, it can’t be done by definition. We do a great many things that aren’t supposed to be possible, and I argue that the supposition is the fault. For instance, there’s no good reason why stasis shields aren’t used tactically to intercept enemy shot and moderate the rate of heat transfer.’ Mirannon said, optimistically.

‘Apart from the field boundary effect.’ Caldor said. ‘How’d you plan to modulate that in flat space? The shear stress-‘

‘That’s not the problem, you just need the boxes to be coterminous with the tensor field limits, power feed and internal field volume are the headaches. You’re thinking about dropping an entire node area into slowtime?’ Mirannon asked.

‘I see where you’re trying to go, but the control mechanisms and the control solutions, you don’t have the computing power or the physical room on board.’ Caldor said.

‘That’s the conclusion I keep coming to, as well.’ Mirannon admitted. ‘I can make the theory work, but only in the transition phase with the hyperdrive motivators already running. They are the control mechanism. As for electronics, well, you remember the design history of the main gun capacitors?’

‘Six impossible things before breakfast?’ Caldor said, smiling. ‘Not in a thousand years.’

‘Probably not, but if somebody started work on it nine hundred and ninety-nine years ago, then we might be in luck.’ Mirannon said; realistically, what he was talking about was indeed impossible.


‘Excuse me, but as a humble operator,’ Lennart said sarcastically, ‘I have just enough idea what you’re on about to tell you to find someone else’s ship to tear apart with stunt time- flying. You’re thinking about double bubbling it, aren’t you?’

‘Well, yes, but-‘ Mirannon said. Lennart interrupted him.

‘I presume you are aware what happened the last time it was tried?’ Lennart said, knowing that he was.

‘The power requirements became transfinite and the test sled was converted to a non event mass. Yes, that is the way the physics work out,’ Mirannon admitted, ‘and DMR were actually hoping that they had got it wrong, but there may be solutions.’

‘All of them fantastically improbable.’ Lennart said. To Caldor he added ‘Feel free to report this to CorSec, they’ll never believe it, and even if they do they won’t understand it…if it gets back to Starfleet command, they’ll probably assume it was an attempt to sabotage the corellian navy.’


‘Half the senior engineers in the yard already believe you’re trying to do that anyway.’ Caldor said. ‘The other half are convinced that only the power of the force could be holding this rustbucket together.’

His old friend’s reaction to that was very interesting. His face went very pale, his fists clenched- was it just the light or did his eyes seem to flash slightly red? Clearly he had touched a nerve. Probe harder and fix the problem? That was his first instinct, but he couldn’t guess what the solution might be.

‘Well, if they have that little confidence in me, then I won’t let them play with my toys.’ Mirannon said, changing the subject quickly- he knew what the problem was, and didn’t want to meet the solution.

Caldor got the message- unusual for an engineer. He joined in changing the subject. ‘The ship’s too individual not to attract attention; we built her in the first place and she’s come a long way since then, we may want to take blueprints.’

‘Cost you.’ Mirannon said, opening the unofficial horse- trading.


‘We have a few turrets lying around in the yard you might be interested in.’ Caldor started with a low bid.

‘We make our own spare parts, but only to a degree, if they’re non standard pattern they could be more trouble than they’re worth. We have the input power, that’s not the issue, show me the efficiency numbers.’ Mirannon said.

Caldor plugged a holo display module into his datapad and started calling up configurations. ‘All buffered 300 teratons per second, standard, slow single 540, triple long light barrel 175s, quad 75’s, twin- triple rapid sniper 40’s, in addition to the Starfleet standards.

More exotically, the rattler mount, a tunable gravitic emitter that can function as a tractor beam, spread a limited radius interdictor effect, induce shear in the structure of a vessel target, surface attack earthquake mode.’

‘Gravitic weapons are never efficient; Starfleet would not normally waste time, money and turret slots on them, however useful they might be- and you’re trying to sell us on them so Corellian Engineering’s marketing boys can claim endorsement, aren’t you?’ Mirannon said.


‘Also, that means it hasn’t really sunk in to the management’s brains how much trouble we’re actually in.’ Lennart said, optimistically. ‘I wonder if there’s any way to use that leverage, pick up the idea and make the endorsement work for us?’

‘I really don’t need to encourage you, do I?’ Caldor said, amazed by the speed they had picked that up with. ‘Look, I might grumble about them a bit but at the end of the day, they pay me.’

‘Relax, we’ll be moving the tractors to the brim trench mount extensions, they have the structure and power connections to take a rattler, and the numbers on the interdiction zone here seem a bit too good to be true for a turret mount- assume optimism, halve the estimates, and… we should still be able to get some use out of them. Not a weapon, but might replace a tractor.’ Lennart said.

‘Ideally we wouldn’t have multiple separate turrets, with separate weapon weights, separate rates of traverse, separate rates of fire, we could cope with one twin 175, one quad 75, one octuple 32 turbolaser and one octuple 32-equivalent ion mount in each battery, but it’s vastly more complicated than it need be.’ He went on, looking at the turret arrangement.

‘Hold decision on the main turrets for now; I want gunnery to simulate these, see if the results are worth the burden. Gut instinct says no, but we’ll see. I don’t want to score political points by accepting a militarily unworthy option.’


‘Speaking about gunners,’ Mirannon tried to change the subject again, ‘I know Aldrem’s a problem, but-‘

‘He’s more than a problem, he’s a pawn- who, if he’s lucky, might just make it to the far side of the board. I’m reasonably sure that the rear-admiral tried to use him as bait, and drew a reaction. What I’ll have to make up to him eventually,’ Lennart said ruefully, ‘is the fact that I’ve been using him as bait too.’

‘If he’s going to get the bow or axial battery, I need to double the estimate of spare parts and techs assigned.’ Mirannon said. ‘Constructor Caldor, you really don’t want to hear this bit.’

Caldor thought about that for a second, and said deadpan ‘I suppose you’re right. If it’s the secret you’ve been trying to keep about reading his datafiles, then I certainly don’t want you to confirm it officially.’

Lennart and Caldor said at the same time ‘Because we’ve already been doing the same thing.’ Lennart added ‘I suppose I should have expected it, and of course all the juicy parts will already have been passed to the diktat, which is now ferreting through them looking for something they can use to advantage.’

‘That’s sounding less and less good an idea.’ The corellian engineer admitted.

‘If you’re going to pass one item of information on, let it be that. This is a tangled bloody mess, the force and the syndicates and the factions of the Empire all falling over each other, and we came here looking for neutral ground, or as near as can be found.’ Lennart admitted.


‘Actually, how much of it have you been able to translate?’ he added.

‘Probably not much more than you. Protocol droids ‘re having to reconstruct the language from scratch. You’d think that someone in Corellia of all places would have travelled far enough-’ Caldor admitted.

‘They won’t manage it; it’s not one language. His private papers are in at least five, and all of them officially unknown. Which confirms the suspicion that he’s from waytokriffandgone out in the outer rim, at least.’ Mirannon said.

‘Which in itself, ah, I think I can see an arrow start to form, at last we get an idea of where this is going.’ Lennart said, relieved. ‘The side he’s on is essentially Palpatine’s. He might owe the darkness, but I can’t imagine them being comfortable patrons, can you? He needs them to owe him something in return. He is after the conspirators.’

‘As opposed to being here to shove the whole business under the carpet?’ Mirannon asked. ‘He’s playing it very cool for that, almost to the extent of letting us hate him.’


‘Which leads us to do what, exactly?’ Lennart asked the rhetorical question, grinning.

‘The devious bastard...’Mirannon acknowledged. ‘He’s trying to get us to do his investigating for him?’

‘Back up his own line of inquiry, at least. Hasn’t been working too well to date because we’ve, I’ve, had too many private hares to chase and we found him sufficiently mysterious to be worth investigating himself.’ Lennart admitted.

‘Where we go from here…I still think working it via the other side is a viable option. If anyone can uncover information the average imperial officer isn’t supposed to know, work well outside channels, it’s the Rebel Alliance.’ Lennart said.

‘You’re proposing to dupe your way into the confidence of your enemy, to use their abilities to work outside the system you’re supposed to protect and defend, to outdo the man who’s also got you under investigation for the murder of an agent of the system;

a system which is the living exemplar of everything you used to hate, is run by an ultimate boss whose own trusted right hand may be leading the plot against him, happily hires and employs people you feel the moral impulse to blow up. You don’t get into trouble by halves, do you?’ Caldor asked.

‘You think that’s bad?’ Lennart said, unabashed. ‘This is the situation after it starts to make sense.’



The Imperial Security Bureau office in Coronet City was far more imposing than it’s limited access and remit here gave it any right to be. They were only here to pursue fugitives from the empire’s law, they had no jurisdiction over crimes committed on Corellia itself. Not that that stopped them trying.

The recent incident, the wholesale gassing of the building which had left the streets around full of agents babbling incoherently, under the influence of truth drugs, to any and all passers by who would listen, had been a monstrous embarrassment. A career- ending cockup for all in charge.

The only thing that could save them was some kind of counterbalancing success, and just maybe they had one about to happen. They had a distinguished visitor; who had been escorted into the building in full biowar protection gear, partly for secrecy and partly for remaining pockets of gas.

The visitor was escorted into the top floor office of the Investigator-General; it was impressively correct- Spartan, barren and gleaming, unblemished desk, holos of His Imperial Majesty on the walls.

The Investigator-General was almost as unruffled; at least seemed that way, but it was outward pose entirely. His career, his life were almost lost, and attempting to retrieve them both from the abyss would depend on a double- or was it triple?- agent.

His visitor stood in front of the desk, took off her mask and hood. Elegant- but vengeful. There was an anger in her beneath the poise, that could be put to use. Excellent.

‘Please, take a seat, lady Tellick- or should I say, Agent Cerberus.’

[jpdt19]

‘You think that’s bad?’ Lennart said, unabashed. ‘This is the situation after it starts to make sense.’

I think this line best sums up this chapter, and the story in general.

Bloody superb, but like real life, the insanity and deviousness of politics makes things almost impossible to keep track of.

My admiration for you rises even more for being able to keep track of the plot, yet alone sucessfully write it.

Most of us poor fanfic authors go for simplicity, because we're usually unable to handle more complicated plots. You dear sir, really grab the bull by the horns don't you.

Excellent chapter.

Hopefully you won't sacrifice Aldrem.

[fractalsponge1]

My head, it spins!

Great chapter, as always. When do we get some turbolaser fire?

Given any thought to what kind of ship you want, in exchange for those notes?