Xim! -- Introduction and Prologue.
Posted: 2003-07-06 05:16am
The action in the centre now was very hot. Throughout the past day the fighting had been going on, but much of it had been skirmishing, the forces of the Despot putting on a brave show as they waited for reinforcement. The coalition before them had held their ground, the Hutts in the centre anchoring on the outer asteroid belt of the system with their heavy units, and a vertical deployment adopted for the flanks. This arrangement, and the lack of a quick press for the conclusion, had lasted for some time: the Hutts did not mind to draw out the game, it seemed, and the Despot needed the rest of his ships to settle the matter.
A brilliant flare and wash of radiation from the outer system had signalled hyperdrives running full-out transitting back to realspace, and the Second Amara Fleet had arrived. Led by the Despot's second cousin, Trynnis, aboard the ten kilometer battleship Fencer, there was little doubt that Xim would now feel ready to press in against the inner system where the coalition forces stood arrayed and waited for his assault. He had attacked in every one of his battles, and Trynnis was his most loyal commander--she had meekly stood by in the Great Purge when members of the Despot's own family--her own, for the Despot truly had none--were slaughtered in cold blood.
That was just one of the many crimes which had outraged the galaxy against the tyrant which now ruled most of its outer space and claimed many planets in his drive to subdue the core. Crimes, of course, which half of the nobles arrayed against him and certainly any one of the Hutts would have committed, as well--but Xim had made the fatal error of underestimate those very Hutts and their ruthlessness, and willingness to maintain their freedom. His invasion of their space underestimated, the defeat had let them rally others to their cause, and now his main force was pitched against that of most of free known space, in an action that was truly decisive.
Here, now, Xim, the bastard son of the usurper Marquis of the Trajh, and no more than a minor pirate lord when he'd begun his rise to power, was the ruler of tens of thousands of systems. A man at the height of power and glory, who had been of the genius to capitalize on the invention of the hyperdrive and devote it to his military conquests. He had forged an army of battle-droids to compliment that strategic mobility and make up for his lack of military manpower, and then he had applied his plundered wealth with a spartan determination to build them to a massive strength.
That was the engine of War that had arrayed in order of battle before the coalition fleet and advanced into range, each rank arranged to provide interlocking coverage against missiles and of mutual shielding. The Hutts were just as organized, and their ships might even be better built. Xim, as always, led from the front, personally commanding the operation from the Sovereign of the Trajh, his proclaimation of the resumption of a birthright, that had been his father's only through main force. But, then, it was main force that had brought Xim his glory, and it was main force in which Xim cloaked his humble origins, and so the fleet advanced, to bring to its commander the honour of fame.
This was the third battle fought over Vontor. Before it, Xim had crushed the forces of King Gandir IX and the Rastin League, seven years into the reign of the Despot. The second battle had seen the great rebellion of the twenty-second year of his reign, aided by the human republics of the core, defeated. That had prompted the last wave of conquests, and ultimately those which had led to the coalition which now stood over Vontor in the third engagement which would be fought in this system in Xim's thirty-year reign.
His forces were very experienced, both the droids and the biologicals alike, and most of them were also experienced in this very system, knowing its stellar cartography intimately from those prior actions. The heavy-armoured ships of the centre excepted to advance and take the Hutts with particle-beamers and, at close-range, massed plasma fire, their advance covered by hordes of missiles from the supporting barrage ships. This formula had seen victory for three decades, and yet again the advance was made in the same old way.
The Hutts held in the centre, though, like no other force Xim's warfleet had faced before had managed. Where others might have cracked at tens of thousands of kilometers, at the very best, when the great plasma barrages tore through hulls of the enemy, the Hutts reoriented their formations, dispersed and concentrated once more with elegantly prepared manoeuvre. Fire was prepared, massed against fixed targets, and the rigid and inflexible formation of Xim's fleet advanced only to be torn through, their hulls just as vulnerable to properly offered and concentrated heavy fire when facing their technological equals.
All was severely in doubt by the time Xim's fleet had punched through the field and fought the Hutts in open space, to their slight advantage. The flanks had stiffened, and fought with unusual courage for the human nobles long distrusted by the coalition for their ties to those who served in Xim's fleet. Understrength, Xim's forces committed against them found that resistance almost worst than his stolid veterans and ever-ready droids in the centre, who simply stoically continued the attack against the Hutts. It bled his forces, and let the Hutts send in the Core fleets against Xim's force in the centre.
Under-equipped by long lethargy of relative peace and arrogance, the fleets were not much to speak of: but their crews and commanders contrasted those of the wilds of the outer galaxy, well organized and viciously stubborn in their freedom and the traditions of their worlds. Decisively, the battle weighed against Xim--and a decisive turn was fatal for the rigid formation which had led his fleet to victory before Third Vontor. It started to collapse around him, and when it did there was nothing to stop the fleet from a rout.
Trynnis saw it, from her position on the right flank of the centre formation, that of the honoured commander, as the whole formation began to collapse. There was nothing to be done for it; there was no hope for the entire fleet. But duty was very clear, of course. So a few ships not immediately beset upon were gathered, and they advanced to the aide of the Despot in the centre, his flagship surrounded and attacked by many of the Hutts, eager to finish off the enemy who had presumed to bring enslavement upon them.
The plasma salvoes of the Fencer cleared through her lighter opposition, and the sight rallied the biologicals, and called in the stoic war-droids: but they were individual ships against a more flexible formation, and they died fast now, ship after ship torn to shreds as it manoeuvred from collapsing units or to aide the Despot in the centre. With the Fencer approaching at speed and engaging his foes, Xim got the Sovereign clear, and the two heavy battleships fought their way out, leaving the wreckage, the plasma and the bodies of the majority of their own fleet behind.
Xim the Despot had other forces, but not enough, nor did he have the shipyards to rebuild his fleet in time, as the conquered worlds rose up in revolt and the Hutt coalition advanced against him. Even his most loyal commander could not save the situation: as his capital was approached, Trynnis took out his remaining ships and attacked, routing the lead elements of the Hutt fleet, but those pitiful numbers were nothing against the main body. Returning, the result that would be had on the next day was clear to all.
Therefore, Xim made the decision to fall back on his military stores, spread on several minor worlds on the extreme fringe of known space. From these, and the loyalists and droids stationed at them, he might just rise to power again, once this coalition before him collapsed, as he expected it would. He was getting old: but not old enough for another chance, and there was certainly no chance now except for death against the forces currently arrayed against him.
Xim would take his remaining forces in the system and escape to the unknown regions of the outer galaxy, where in cryogenic suspension the biologicals could wait out a chance to fight once more, and the droids could monitor the situation. A ruse, though, would have to be perpetuated, and to that Trynnis must accomadate the situation. The remaining forces in the outer systems would have to be led on the defence to the last, and her command of the Sovereign of the Trajh would come with an order to make the Despot's apparent death look very well.
Trynnis had been expecting the order since the Third Battle of Vontor, and obeyed it. This was the service she had taken, and duty had always had the threat of carrying her to death. So it was that the Despot made good his escape into the countless stars of the outer void, and his most loyal fought on to the death in the destroyed remnants of an empire of tyranny. Only traces were left behind; no resurgence came, and over time, Xim drifted in the memories of the galaxy as legend of a romantic and distant age of barbarism and splendour.
Estrianna Islandeh had a grant, and the will to use it. Ever since incidents around the destruction of a smuggling group had uncovered one of Xim's massive war depots in the Tion Hegemony, various archaeologists with an interest in the obscure had clustered around that area. Granted, the history of the various pre-Republican interstellar nations generally attracted less attention than xeno-archaeology did, but someone always managed to churn up money for research into them. In the case of Xim, that had even come from the Imperial government itself. Estrianna snickered to herself--there was probably some case study in a bueaucrat's file out there on a contigency plan for dealing with his return.
Oddly, it seemed like Xim himself at least tried to make such a return possible, and that was what Estrianna was now persuing. Several badly decayed records in the vaults--recovered with the help of an Imperial escort from the occasional efforts of the remain native cultists to interfere--had indicated that Xim may not have died during the Beltir Sector Stand. Once this information had filtered up above a certain level, it had left various people intensely curious about his fate--including the modern governor of the Beltir Sector (which barely coincided with the borders of Xim's sector of the same name), who pretended to be a real archaeologist in his spare time.
That was why an Imperial Frigate was now carrying Estrianna and her team towards the communications coordinates that they'd torn out of the old machinery of the Despot's bunkers. A frigate with a perniciously bored commander, chiseled jaw set in his annoyance at the idea of carrying a collection of scientists about to sate his governor's hobby, especially into uncharted and potentially dangerous space.
"Professor Islandeh," Commander Jospar Arlett managed politely enough to the civilian on his bridge--he'd kicked the rest of the team off, "we shall be reverting to hyperspace within another seven minutes. I must warn you, however: do you have any experience in archaeology in a hostile enviroment?"
Estrianna looked to the Imperial Commander, Captain of that ship, slightly surprised, distracted from her reverie. The bridge crew studiously ignored her, ratings going about their duties and officers, mostly, making final preparations for the reversion. "Some, Captain. Of what sort, if I may ask?"
"Our destination, if astrogation is correct, is a neutron star," Arlett responded with an insidious politeness, informing her about something he'd known about for the past two days.
"Well, I'd have trouble working on the surface of one of those, Captain," Estrianna replied calmly, remembering that the backing of the Sector Governor kept her quite safe in her position here, "But, if you are to refer to investigations in airless enviroments--yes, I've done those." A smile was added, softening what could of been a bite into light-hearted banter, but the commander of the Urgard knew better, she could tell. Oh well; it had already been a long journey.
She watched the bridge, then, not speaking but just observing, as the crew went about their duties. The five minute klaxon sounded, and activity intensified as the plots were double-checked and systems brought online. The frigate was a small ship, only five hundred and sixty meters long, and a somewhat older product of Rendili Stardrive Yards on the basic KDY hull model. Quite sufficient for hopping around the outer rim and wild space, of course.
"Condition Two," Commander Arlett ordered. He was inherently suspicious of jumping out in any system towards the outer fringes of Wild Space, and perhaps especially a neutron star--that might aide an attacker, or be a good place for pirates to transfer loot. This was probably the ultimate in fruitless hunts, but might be an excellent way to get his crew killed.
"Shields up, sir," Lt. Esvalis at defence reported. "Damage control parties assembling to fifty percent."
The one minute klaxon sounded as the crew was coming to their enhanced readiness stations. Estrianna watched two Stormtrooper guards arrive on the bridge as part of the Condition Two readiness requirements, boots clomping on the deck as the strode in the from the turbolift, and additional crewers fill out some of the stations on the bridge.
A buzzer sounded, distinctive enough that it took Estrianna only a moment to recognize it--the reversion signal--and Lt. Kalad, the Astrogator, and Ensign Ysand, the assistant Astrogator, pulled back on their respective sets of levers in unison, a time-honoured custom not really necessary on a heavy warship, but usually done to make sure that the very last level of redundancy was put into the hyperdrive reversion process. The mottled reality of hyperspace streaked back into realspace before then, and what a brilliant visage it was!
The power of the neutron star's radiation was rendered into a miasma of intense colours by the viewscreen, deathly greens of a sinister warning that tapered off beyond it. The space around it was strewn with debris, that which might not be immediately native to the system, things drawn into the merciless orbit. And, beyond and to the outside, an unknown vortex flared up, a tendril'd nebula that seemed to crackle with energy.
No ships, no evidence of human artifice in sight. But every could immediately recognize that the vortex beyond was unnatural to the system, not in the records and something that none of them had encountered before. "Ensign Nuland, probe that," Arlett ordered to the officer commanding the sensor banks.
"Of course, sir, but we'll need to close to within four hundred thousand kilometers to get accurate reading," the young officer answered.
"Four hundred thousand kilometers? Even with short-range sensors that's a bit excessive."
"There's some considerable interference from it, sir--on various spectra. When we close, we will likely be unable to use hyperdrive, and I'm not sure about our shield stability either," the Ensign answered promptly, trying to make up for his own uncertainty on the subject.
Commander Arlett looked to him sharply for a moment, trying to divine through the mask of the young what he could not about the little mystery before him. Then he nodded. "We'll begin to close, helm--no more than a hundred gravities of acceleration, however. I want this to be very gentle, with most of our power in reserve."
Then he turned back to Erianna. "Professor, I fear we have not discovered the grave of Xim the Despot, but you have found us a mystery to bring back to His Excellency."
Erianna bowed her head slightly, smiling in return. "Captain, perhaps that is the grave of Xim the Despot."
"Perhaps it is, at that," Arlett allowed, with a chuckle, even. "Certainly there's as much chance of us finding that in there as anything else at this moment, I'll grant.." It would be a boring next few hours, but if he could pacify the professor and come back to the Governor with something interesting, well, that weird blob on his screen would be useful to his career; and that counted for a lot indeed. Arlett had just married, and a Commander's salary was not enough to support a family on the sector capital. Better yet, a choice of assignments might keep him in the Tion Hegemony, far from the chance of action against the Rebellion.
"ST-19, send for Kaff for the bridge, please," he ordered the servitor droid. Might as well make the next few hours comfortable, successful or not.
And so the Urgard advanced steadily towards the boiling, churning vortex before them...
A brilliant flare and wash of radiation from the outer system had signalled hyperdrives running full-out transitting back to realspace, and the Second Amara Fleet had arrived. Led by the Despot's second cousin, Trynnis, aboard the ten kilometer battleship Fencer, there was little doubt that Xim would now feel ready to press in against the inner system where the coalition forces stood arrayed and waited for his assault. He had attacked in every one of his battles, and Trynnis was his most loyal commander--she had meekly stood by in the Great Purge when members of the Despot's own family--her own, for the Despot truly had none--were slaughtered in cold blood.
That was just one of the many crimes which had outraged the galaxy against the tyrant which now ruled most of its outer space and claimed many planets in his drive to subdue the core. Crimes, of course, which half of the nobles arrayed against him and certainly any one of the Hutts would have committed, as well--but Xim had made the fatal error of underestimate those very Hutts and their ruthlessness, and willingness to maintain their freedom. His invasion of their space underestimated, the defeat had let them rally others to their cause, and now his main force was pitched against that of most of free known space, in an action that was truly decisive.
Here, now, Xim, the bastard son of the usurper Marquis of the Trajh, and no more than a minor pirate lord when he'd begun his rise to power, was the ruler of tens of thousands of systems. A man at the height of power and glory, who had been of the genius to capitalize on the invention of the hyperdrive and devote it to his military conquests. He had forged an army of battle-droids to compliment that strategic mobility and make up for his lack of military manpower, and then he had applied his plundered wealth with a spartan determination to build them to a massive strength.
That was the engine of War that had arrayed in order of battle before the coalition fleet and advanced into range, each rank arranged to provide interlocking coverage against missiles and of mutual shielding. The Hutts were just as organized, and their ships might even be better built. Xim, as always, led from the front, personally commanding the operation from the Sovereign of the Trajh, his proclaimation of the resumption of a birthright, that had been his father's only through main force. But, then, it was main force that had brought Xim his glory, and it was main force in which Xim cloaked his humble origins, and so the fleet advanced, to bring to its commander the honour of fame.
This was the third battle fought over Vontor. Before it, Xim had crushed the forces of King Gandir IX and the Rastin League, seven years into the reign of the Despot. The second battle had seen the great rebellion of the twenty-second year of his reign, aided by the human republics of the core, defeated. That had prompted the last wave of conquests, and ultimately those which had led to the coalition which now stood over Vontor in the third engagement which would be fought in this system in Xim's thirty-year reign.
His forces were very experienced, both the droids and the biologicals alike, and most of them were also experienced in this very system, knowing its stellar cartography intimately from those prior actions. The heavy-armoured ships of the centre excepted to advance and take the Hutts with particle-beamers and, at close-range, massed plasma fire, their advance covered by hordes of missiles from the supporting barrage ships. This formula had seen victory for three decades, and yet again the advance was made in the same old way.
The Hutts held in the centre, though, like no other force Xim's warfleet had faced before had managed. Where others might have cracked at tens of thousands of kilometers, at the very best, when the great plasma barrages tore through hulls of the enemy, the Hutts reoriented their formations, dispersed and concentrated once more with elegantly prepared manoeuvre. Fire was prepared, massed against fixed targets, and the rigid and inflexible formation of Xim's fleet advanced only to be torn through, their hulls just as vulnerable to properly offered and concentrated heavy fire when facing their technological equals.
All was severely in doubt by the time Xim's fleet had punched through the field and fought the Hutts in open space, to their slight advantage. The flanks had stiffened, and fought with unusual courage for the human nobles long distrusted by the coalition for their ties to those who served in Xim's fleet. Understrength, Xim's forces committed against them found that resistance almost worst than his stolid veterans and ever-ready droids in the centre, who simply stoically continued the attack against the Hutts. It bled his forces, and let the Hutts send in the Core fleets against Xim's force in the centre.
Under-equipped by long lethargy of relative peace and arrogance, the fleets were not much to speak of: but their crews and commanders contrasted those of the wilds of the outer galaxy, well organized and viciously stubborn in their freedom and the traditions of their worlds. Decisively, the battle weighed against Xim--and a decisive turn was fatal for the rigid formation which had led his fleet to victory before Third Vontor. It started to collapse around him, and when it did there was nothing to stop the fleet from a rout.
Trynnis saw it, from her position on the right flank of the centre formation, that of the honoured commander, as the whole formation began to collapse. There was nothing to be done for it; there was no hope for the entire fleet. But duty was very clear, of course. So a few ships not immediately beset upon were gathered, and they advanced to the aide of the Despot in the centre, his flagship surrounded and attacked by many of the Hutts, eager to finish off the enemy who had presumed to bring enslavement upon them.
The plasma salvoes of the Fencer cleared through her lighter opposition, and the sight rallied the biologicals, and called in the stoic war-droids: but they were individual ships against a more flexible formation, and they died fast now, ship after ship torn to shreds as it manoeuvred from collapsing units or to aide the Despot in the centre. With the Fencer approaching at speed and engaging his foes, Xim got the Sovereign clear, and the two heavy battleships fought their way out, leaving the wreckage, the plasma and the bodies of the majority of their own fleet behind.
Xim the Despot had other forces, but not enough, nor did he have the shipyards to rebuild his fleet in time, as the conquered worlds rose up in revolt and the Hutt coalition advanced against him. Even his most loyal commander could not save the situation: as his capital was approached, Trynnis took out his remaining ships and attacked, routing the lead elements of the Hutt fleet, but those pitiful numbers were nothing against the main body. Returning, the result that would be had on the next day was clear to all.
Therefore, Xim made the decision to fall back on his military stores, spread on several minor worlds on the extreme fringe of known space. From these, and the loyalists and droids stationed at them, he might just rise to power again, once this coalition before him collapsed, as he expected it would. He was getting old: but not old enough for another chance, and there was certainly no chance now except for death against the forces currently arrayed against him.
Xim would take his remaining forces in the system and escape to the unknown regions of the outer galaxy, where in cryogenic suspension the biologicals could wait out a chance to fight once more, and the droids could monitor the situation. A ruse, though, would have to be perpetuated, and to that Trynnis must accomadate the situation. The remaining forces in the outer systems would have to be led on the defence to the last, and her command of the Sovereign of the Trajh would come with an order to make the Despot's apparent death look very well.
Trynnis had been expecting the order since the Third Battle of Vontor, and obeyed it. This was the service she had taken, and duty had always had the threat of carrying her to death. So it was that the Despot made good his escape into the countless stars of the outer void, and his most loyal fought on to the death in the destroyed remnants of an empire of tyranny. Only traces were left behind; no resurgence came, and over time, Xim drifted in the memories of the galaxy as legend of a romantic and distant age of barbarism and splendour.
Estrianna Islandeh had a grant, and the will to use it. Ever since incidents around the destruction of a smuggling group had uncovered one of Xim's massive war depots in the Tion Hegemony, various archaeologists with an interest in the obscure had clustered around that area. Granted, the history of the various pre-Republican interstellar nations generally attracted less attention than xeno-archaeology did, but someone always managed to churn up money for research into them. In the case of Xim, that had even come from the Imperial government itself. Estrianna snickered to herself--there was probably some case study in a bueaucrat's file out there on a contigency plan for dealing with his return.
Oddly, it seemed like Xim himself at least tried to make such a return possible, and that was what Estrianna was now persuing. Several badly decayed records in the vaults--recovered with the help of an Imperial escort from the occasional efforts of the remain native cultists to interfere--had indicated that Xim may not have died during the Beltir Sector Stand. Once this information had filtered up above a certain level, it had left various people intensely curious about his fate--including the modern governor of the Beltir Sector (which barely coincided with the borders of Xim's sector of the same name), who pretended to be a real archaeologist in his spare time.
That was why an Imperial Frigate was now carrying Estrianna and her team towards the communications coordinates that they'd torn out of the old machinery of the Despot's bunkers. A frigate with a perniciously bored commander, chiseled jaw set in his annoyance at the idea of carrying a collection of scientists about to sate his governor's hobby, especially into uncharted and potentially dangerous space.
"Professor Islandeh," Commander Jospar Arlett managed politely enough to the civilian on his bridge--he'd kicked the rest of the team off, "we shall be reverting to hyperspace within another seven minutes. I must warn you, however: do you have any experience in archaeology in a hostile enviroment?"
Estrianna looked to the Imperial Commander, Captain of that ship, slightly surprised, distracted from her reverie. The bridge crew studiously ignored her, ratings going about their duties and officers, mostly, making final preparations for the reversion. "Some, Captain. Of what sort, if I may ask?"
"Our destination, if astrogation is correct, is a neutron star," Arlett responded with an insidious politeness, informing her about something he'd known about for the past two days.
"Well, I'd have trouble working on the surface of one of those, Captain," Estrianna replied calmly, remembering that the backing of the Sector Governor kept her quite safe in her position here, "But, if you are to refer to investigations in airless enviroments--yes, I've done those." A smile was added, softening what could of been a bite into light-hearted banter, but the commander of the Urgard knew better, she could tell. Oh well; it had already been a long journey.
She watched the bridge, then, not speaking but just observing, as the crew went about their duties. The five minute klaxon sounded, and activity intensified as the plots were double-checked and systems brought online. The frigate was a small ship, only five hundred and sixty meters long, and a somewhat older product of Rendili Stardrive Yards on the basic KDY hull model. Quite sufficient for hopping around the outer rim and wild space, of course.
"Condition Two," Commander Arlett ordered. He was inherently suspicious of jumping out in any system towards the outer fringes of Wild Space, and perhaps especially a neutron star--that might aide an attacker, or be a good place for pirates to transfer loot. This was probably the ultimate in fruitless hunts, but might be an excellent way to get his crew killed.
"Shields up, sir," Lt. Esvalis at defence reported. "Damage control parties assembling to fifty percent."
The one minute klaxon sounded as the crew was coming to their enhanced readiness stations. Estrianna watched two Stormtrooper guards arrive on the bridge as part of the Condition Two readiness requirements, boots clomping on the deck as the strode in the from the turbolift, and additional crewers fill out some of the stations on the bridge.
A buzzer sounded, distinctive enough that it took Estrianna only a moment to recognize it--the reversion signal--and Lt. Kalad, the Astrogator, and Ensign Ysand, the assistant Astrogator, pulled back on their respective sets of levers in unison, a time-honoured custom not really necessary on a heavy warship, but usually done to make sure that the very last level of redundancy was put into the hyperdrive reversion process. The mottled reality of hyperspace streaked back into realspace before then, and what a brilliant visage it was!
The power of the neutron star's radiation was rendered into a miasma of intense colours by the viewscreen, deathly greens of a sinister warning that tapered off beyond it. The space around it was strewn with debris, that which might not be immediately native to the system, things drawn into the merciless orbit. And, beyond and to the outside, an unknown vortex flared up, a tendril'd nebula that seemed to crackle with energy.
No ships, no evidence of human artifice in sight. But every could immediately recognize that the vortex beyond was unnatural to the system, not in the records and something that none of them had encountered before. "Ensign Nuland, probe that," Arlett ordered to the officer commanding the sensor banks.
"Of course, sir, but we'll need to close to within four hundred thousand kilometers to get accurate reading," the young officer answered.
"Four hundred thousand kilometers? Even with short-range sensors that's a bit excessive."
"There's some considerable interference from it, sir--on various spectra. When we close, we will likely be unable to use hyperdrive, and I'm not sure about our shield stability either," the Ensign answered promptly, trying to make up for his own uncertainty on the subject.
Commander Arlett looked to him sharply for a moment, trying to divine through the mask of the young what he could not about the little mystery before him. Then he nodded. "We'll begin to close, helm--no more than a hundred gravities of acceleration, however. I want this to be very gentle, with most of our power in reserve."
Then he turned back to Erianna. "Professor, I fear we have not discovered the grave of Xim the Despot, but you have found us a mystery to bring back to His Excellency."
Erianna bowed her head slightly, smiling in return. "Captain, perhaps that is the grave of Xim the Despot."
"Perhaps it is, at that," Arlett allowed, with a chuckle, even. "Certainly there's as much chance of us finding that in there as anything else at this moment, I'll grant.." It would be a boring next few hours, but if he could pacify the professor and come back to the Governor with something interesting, well, that weird blob on his screen would be useful to his career; and that counted for a lot indeed. Arlett had just married, and a Commander's salary was not enough to support a family on the sector capital. Better yet, a choice of assignments might keep him in the Tion Hegemony, far from the chance of action against the Rebellion.
"ST-19, send for Kaff for the bridge, please," he ordered the servitor droid. Might as well make the next few hours comfortable, successful or not.
And so the Urgard advanced steadily towards the boiling, churning vortex before them...
