StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Underappreciated on SDN, the character fic which predates the creation of the board and hasn't been updated in Six Months... is now updated. Whee. I await your unresponsiveness.



Suicide Squad
8
Three Day Pass


"I hate Coruscant. I've always hated it," Sanchez was saying.

Dalton shook his head, "Have you ever actually been here before?"

"Me personally?" Pablo asked.

"Yes, of course you personally," Dalton clarified.

"In that case, no. But I have heard a great deal about it," Pablo replied, "from people whose opinions I trust."

"That's no way to go about life. How will you ever find new things if you've already decided how you felt about them?"

"Why should I want to meet new people and discover new experiences? Things are complicated enough, I want to keep them simple enough that I can be drunk and ignorant twenty-four hours a day. Coruscant doesn't fit into that scheme."

Rob shook his head, "Drunk and ignorant. That's quite a goal, do you think that you'll be able to accomplish it?"

"It's easy to fail," Pablo replied, "but it requires a lot of effort and training to fail as spectacularly as I am planning to fail. Take the new morale officer, for example."

Dalton smiled, "I'd love to."

Pablo nodded and continued, "You know what I did this morning? I asked her if she knew what fine Tercilian wine tasted like. She didn't know, naturally, because there's no such thing. So I downed the cup of red wine I was holding and asked if she wanted to find out."

"That's a good one, Sergeant, really it is. What did she say?" Dalton asked with a roll of his eyes.

Sanchez shrugged, "She didn't say much of anything. She tried to punch me but I rolled with it and it didn't do much. I she had connected, though... what a woman. Now, have you ever failed so utterly at something like that?"

"Never."

"You see? You just don't have my experience," Pablo concluded.

----

The platoon was on Coruscant for rest and refit, a nice diversion from the icy winter death zone of Shelemin Beta. They had helped to prevent the capture of a minor waystation on the road to a larger waystation which was on the road to the capitol of the Galactic Empire, and they were damned proud of this achievement. Especially those members of the group which had had their field promotions confirmed, Strowbridge beaming with pride as he was soon to be transferred to command of an obscure guards rifle company somewhere in the obscurity of the central rim theatre.

In the meantime, however, he had been presented with an incredible opportunity to fullfil his devious plan of finding out what the hell was happening to him and his platoon, and why everyone wanted them dead. Most of his men, he could understand people having a desire to kill, but he was simply too pretty and charming for anyone to dislike. It had to be a conspiracy which was focussed on him, just as ninety percent of all events happening anywhere were focussed on him. (It was good to be an egomaniac).

As part of its rest and relaxation programme, the platoon (né company) under his command was guarding the Imperial Defense Board library, a cavernous building which housed a lot of information. Strowbridge did not know exactly how much data was there, and when he had asked Sergeant Crayz, the computer-savvy unit quartermaster, the man had told him to think of a big number, then multiply it by the biggest number he could think of, and then that would get him somewhere in the ballpark of how many different documents pertaining to the production of female hygenic products were the mainframes. Everything relating to the conduct of the Second Galactic Civil War was running through those computers. This presented the guard (Strowbridge) and his slicer (Crayz) with an incredible opportunity to find out exactly why people wanted them dead (actually nobody really wanted Crayz dead, it was only the members of the team actively involved in combat, which made the horrible accidental death of former Morale Officer Chuck Sonnenburg all the more tragic).

----

"Look, goddamnit, I can't just /find/ the data. It has to be searched for! You need to be specific, or it'll take hours. Give me a seed, for a god's sake," Crayz said despairingly.

Captain Strowbridge thought, "Personnel profile documents. Our PPDs."

No soldier was supposed to get hold of his own PPD, which housed all of the information that the army had collected on them. The two men sat hunched around one of the hundreds of terminals in a tertiary library, which was empty at that time of night. The immediate area around them was lit only by the glow of the holomonitor. As Crayz initiated the search, a series of crashes and moans sounded behind them.

Strowbridge turned around, squinting into the inky blackness, "Damnit, Björn, get your shit together!"

There was no danger of them being discovered, because that tertiary library was being guarded by their platoon. But the bumbling was dispelling the very hip secret agent feel that Strowbridge was getting.

Paulsen had tripped over a console and knocked a great number of things from a nearby shelf. He groaned, "Can't we turn on the lights, sir?"

"For the last time, no! It's an atmospheric choice; stop being such a buzzkill!" Strowbridge said.

"Got 'em," Crayz announced, "Most of them are only classified level Mother, easy to crack. Who do you want first?"

Strowbridge leaned over and looked at the holodisplay, "Who do you think?"

"Captain Narcissus it is," Crayz said as he stroke the proper keys, "Uploaded to our cube. Highlights..."

Crayz was speed reading the display. Strowbridge had just recently found out just after the Fall of Sonnenburg that Crayz was not an ordinary, stock human. He was a crusty veteran, of course, but the reason he was a quartermaster instead of a combat soldier had been unknown. It turned out that Crayz had been shot in the head but survived, much like the late Ryan Spickard. However, Crayz had been fighting at a time and in a theatre in which the medical corps had not yet begun to blow off their responsibilities, and he had recieved a cybernetic brain upgrade in the interests of saving his life.

When the accountants at the central hospitals had found out, they had immediately fired off a barrage of memos ordering the doctors to let their head-wounded patients deal with it by dying or going insane (both being cheaper than fixing the problem) and moved Crayz to quartermaster duty because his improved brain was too valuable to be distributed all over some swampy battlefield by an unlucky blaster bolt.

Which was fine with him.

He cleared his throat, "'Personality traits: Egomaniacal, ruthless, self-centered, ambitious, competent. Recommend placement in penal or one hundred PLR force.' That's a One Hundred Percent Loss Rate force, abbreviated."

"They hit the nail on the head, didn't they?" C.S. whispered, "What else?"

"Combat record, blah blah blah, full psych evaluation, yadda yadda yadda. Boring stuff. It's on the cube, let's move on," Crayz continued.

"How about Kynes?" Paulsen suggested from the floor, under his shelf and heap of datacubes.

"Okay, he's still listed with us, but awaiting transfer to another platoon," Crayz said as he skimmed the document, "Amoral, fond of holding grudges, sex-crazed, intelligent. He seduced the psychiatrist and didn't call her the next morning, so she recommended that he be placed in a 100PLR."

"Simple enough," Paulsen said, "me next!"

Strowbridge growled, "I'll decide who we look at next. Paulsen it is."

"This is good. The assessor wrote, 'Intelligent, courteous, educated, highly competent. Looks like your winning streak is OVER, fucker.' How do you like that, Björn?"

The medic was too busy making choking noises of rage to be bothered.

Strowbridge considered for a moment. He wanted to find out the story behind the assassination mission he had gone on with Sanchez, so the new sergeant would be next.

Crayz opened the file and hissed at the screen, "Double-U Tee Eff?"

"What is it?" Strowbridge asked.

"Just hyper-links to other documents. It says 'See FamilyProject.dev, FamilyProject.opeval, CPabloSanchez6770.ppd, OPabloSanchez.ppd.' And they're all classified at Level Victor; it'd take me days to crack them. I don't know what the hell this means," the slicer said.

"Try Yates. We hooked up with him on the same mission," the Captain ordered.

Crayz did so, "The same thing. Two 'Family Project' documents, one for development and one for operational evaluation, and then two Nathan Yates files with minor differences from eachother."

"Shit. How long did you say you needed to crack it?"

"Three, maybe four days," Crayz answered.

"Make it so," Captain Strowbridge ordered.

----

"Now, I know all you men are very bored with this guard duty," Lieutenant Antilles said over the mic, "but think of this: You're guarding a library complex. It's not just dry reports. There's also the Imperial Defense Board recommended entertainment list. There's a lot of very good stories, movies, and games to be found. I have prepared a short list."

She cleared her throat, "On the literary side: Generals' Gambit, The Defenestration of Corellia, Starcrossed, Journal of the Righteous Defense of Coruscant, and much more. You may acquire a full list with directions for access after my announcements have concluded."

"Next, there are the movies. There are many popular and artistically excellent films which can be viewed in the library cinema, here are just a few: Marching Through Dantooine, Last Days of the Imperial Palace--"

Someone interrupted Kelly Antilles at this point. The entire platoon under Strowbridge except for those on guard duty and those involved in mysterious middle-of-the-night intelligence operations had been called down to an auditorium to address the crippling issue of boredom and its effect on morale. But, since most of them had not seen a woman in some time, and were boorish pigs in the best of times, the focus soon shifted.

"I was in that one," Sanchez shouted, "It sucked! Why don't you just sing us a nice song, that'll get morale up!"

"Among other things!" someone in the back row said.

Any further comments were drowned out by a wave of hooting and hollering. Sergeant de Fromage strode across the stage and grabbed the microphone out of Kelly's hand.

"Alright, you fuckers. You want something to do, I will PT your asses till you fucking die!" he shouted, "I am NOT Kynes, I will NOT tolerate this innuendo bullshit!"

Private David, who was sitting in the front row, decided that it was time to do something. He nimbly hopped onto the stage and pulled a electronic pocket megaphone up to his mouth.

"Alright," he said to the crowd, "I have an idea! A dream, if you will!"

Edam threw his microphone to the ground, eliciting a horrid screeching from the speakers until they automatically cut off.

"Where did you get that thing, you rat bastard?" he yelled.

David turned and blasted the NCO with his amplifying device, "Shut up!"

He turned back to the crowd, "Now, my friends, I have a dream. Do you know what that is?"

Dalton, in the front row, asked, "Did you dream of a rhetorical question?"

"No! I had a dream of porn, gripe sessions, and a forum for free expression. A brotherhood of men, and potentially a sisterhood of sex workers closely involved. I have found a derelict lounge for just this purpose beneath the library, who is with me?"

The men cheered, for this was exactly the sort of thing that they needed. Edam was less enthusiastic, and he grabbed the pocket megaphone and threw David from the stage. But the force of his idea was too great, and the men in the front row merely caught him and carried him off to the abandoned lounge on their shoulders. Edam stormed out, and soon the only people left in the auditorium were Sanchez and the morale officer.

"That didn't go too well, did it?" the sergeant called up to her.

Kelly gritted her teeth, "Obviously not."

Pablo grinned, "Well, do you want to--"

Lieutenant Antilles screamed, "No!"

----

Coruscant was a capital city during a massive war. This meant one thing: there were a lot of bars doing very well. All it took to make a good amount of money on Coruscant was a supply of alcohol which would not maim the consumer. Just as the entrepeneurial mind was aware of this, so was the military mind. It was obvious, then, that all troops were supposed to be confined to their barracks or their posts, and that the soldiers and the bars would do their damndest to get them out on the town.

This created conditions that made the formation of a secret society very likely. When men are forced into a regimented setting and have no access to mind-numbing chemicals, disaster is never far off. Many a mutiny had occurred under just those circumstances, but there was nothing to be done about it. The boredom destroyed respect of the chain of command and commonly resulted in buggery, violence, or desertion. On more than one occasion the New Republic and Galactic Empire had conspired to open a new front solely for the purpose of getting soldiers into the more controllable state of combat fatigue.

The platoon now had its own secret society. Most of the troops who had been guards for more than a few months did not bother with it, the conscripts being the major participants. It had created an espirit de corps and structure of command wholly separate from the army, which was a bad thing. They did not care about conventional discipline any more, and there was very little anyone could do about it. When the troops reentered combat, the new society would shatter, but who knew when that would take place? There were stories of whole divisions transferred to Coruscant that sat and sat for so long that they deserted and disappeared from the Imperial order of battle, fading into the deep recesses of the Imperial City to live a troglodyte raiding existence.

Until one or the other of those ends took place, David's society was occupied with trying to have some fun.

"Leave me alone, you fuckers," Crayz shouted, "I've got work to do!"

David sneered at his superior, "This is more important."

"For the last time, there is no porn on this datanet. This is a government network, why would they have porn?" the quartermaster asked.

One of the crushing crowd of David's followers shouted, "You never know!"

Crayz shook his head sadly. This was such a bunch of bullshit that he could hardly believe it. There had to be nearly twenty of them. He wished that Strowbridge was there, they might have listened to an officer.

"Where did you come from, asshole, you're not even a member of this platoon!" he yelled back at the man.

David stood up straighter, "It's none of your business, my friend."

"You will address your superior as 'sir!'" someone shouted from behind the group.

The men all turned around to get a look at the new entrant, already beginning to jeer.

Sanchez had just walked into the library where Crayz was doing his work. He had wanted to get something, but there were about twenty idiots in his way, berating a superior officer. Sanchez had seen this problem of collapsing discipline before, or at least he had heard about it (he could never remember what had happened to him, and what he had merely been told).

At any rate, he knew he had to do something about it before the situation got worse. He asked himself the question which a surprising number of NCOs across the Empire asked themselves: 'What would Kynes do?'

Pablo knew. It was imperative in this situation to assert dominance; Crayz could not do it, because the soldiers thought of him as a soft rear-echelon mother fucker who posed no real threat. Sanchez was a short, dark man who had killed many people without hesitation and would do it again. These men were soldiers like him, but also unlike him, because not every soldier is a killer--especially among the conscripts which composed these people. It was thus possible for him to do something.

He was still carrying his DL-44, so he whipped it out and pointed it directly in the face of the nearest thug.

"Say it!" he ordered.

The man's eyes went wide and he stuttered, "S-say what?"

"'We were all just leaving, sir!'" Sanchez replied.

The man haltingly obeyed the command.

"Good! Now get your hairy asses out of this library," the sergeant gestured with his gun.

The men quietly filed past, and as the last one went by, Sanchez reached out and grabbed him by the collar.

"You stay, David," he growled, turning to Crayz, "Get the Last Days of the Imperial Palace, unedited version."

Crayz tapped out the command and handed Pablo the datacube. The sergeant pressed it into David's palm, "Here is one of the best holofilms ever made. You hatfuckers can watch that."

He pushed David away, and the private stalked out of the room, plotting his revenge.

Pablo faced Crayz again, "Three-day pass."

"Easy enough," the slicer said, "Just crack this password prompt and commandeer someone's signature... got it."

A sheet of flimsiplast emerged from a slot in the terminal, giving Pablo the right to move through Coruscant almost at will. Without even a word of thanks, the assassin snatched up the sheet and sprinted out of the room, as if he was afraid it would evaporate in his hands if he waited even a moment.

Crayz turned back to where he was trying to slice into Sanchez's own personnel files.

"Everybody's an asshole," he mumbled to himself.

That was quite good.
Now i'll go to the archive and read chapters 1-7

EDITed for grammer and the transformation of a "t" to a "w"
EDITED AGAIN: to put a "to" so it made sense

Comrade Pablo, you betray the People taking 6 mounths to add another chapter. Why, someone might think you are a Counter-Revolutionary!

Grand Admiral Thrawn wrote:Comrade Pablo, you betray the People taking 6 mounths to add another chapter. Why, someone might think you are a Counter-Revolutionary!

Am I? Remember that the World Proletarian Revolution must be a long time incubating, lest it fail as it did in the unprepared Russia.

Pablo Sanchez wrote:

Grand Admiral Thrawn wrote:Comrade Pablo, you betray the People taking 6 mounths to add another chapter. Why, someone might think you are a Counter-Revolutionary!

Am I? Remember that the World Proletarian Revolution must be a long time incubating, lest it fail as it did in the unprepared Russia.

Bah, Proletariat Revolutions do not start and then stop suddenly for 6 mounths before overthrowing the bourgeoisie!

Crayz turned back to where he was trying to slice into Sanchez's own personnel files.

"Everybody's an asshole," he mumbled to himself.

A perfect ending to a very amusing chapter. Thumb and a half up.

Pablo Sanchez wrote:Underappreciated on SDN, the character fic which predates the creation of the board and hasn't been updated in Six Months... is now updated. Whee. I await your unresponsiveness.

YAY Its updated

YAY!

"Look, goddamnit, I can't just /find/ the data. It has to be searched for! You need to be specific, or it'll take hours. Give me a seed, for a god's sake," Crayz said despairingly.

Captain Strowbridge thought, "Personnel profile documents. Our PPDs."

No soldier was supposed to get hold of his own PPD, which housed all of the information that the army had collected on them.

An excellent idea. And it makes a lot of sense. Who contributes
to these PPDs? COMPNOR? Imperial Intelligence, Military intelligence?
etc? Or is it just random shit scribbled into their files by their commanding
officers?

"Can't we turn on the lights, sir?"

"For the last time, no! It's an atmospheric choice; stop being such a buzzkill!" Strowbridge said.

Hehehhe reminds me of the quote from Schindler's List where Schindler
comments on why he's driving in an open black mercedes like most
Nazis do in war movies:

"because it's fucking cold, that's why"

When the accountants at the central hospitals had found out, they had immediately fired off a barrage of memos ordering the doctors to let their head-wounded patients deal with it by dying or going insane (both being cheaper than fixing the problem)

Military Bureaucracy at it's finest

Recommend placement in penal or one hundred PLR force.' That's a One Hundred Percent Loss Rate force, abbreviated."

That's an excellent idea. Mind if I steal it?

He seduced the psychiatrist and didn't call her the next morning, so she recommended that he be placed in a 100PLR."

ROFLMAOMACO :lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

"Just hyper-links to other documents. It says 'See FamilyProject.dev, FamilyProject.opeval, CPabloSanchez6770.ppd, OPabloSanchez.ppd.' And they're all classified at Level Victor; it'd take me days to crack them. I don't know what the hell this means," the slicer said.

At least the Imperial military knows operational security, unlike Trek...
but it's probably your rantings about the sexual peccadiloes of your
superiors in case you get demoted

She cleared her throat, "On the literary side: Generals' Gambit, The Defenestration of Corellia, Starcrossed, Journal of the Righteous Defense of Coruscant, and much more. You may acquire a full list with directions for access after my announcements have concluded."

Doing a little propaganda for Stravo here?

"No! I had a dream of porn, gripe sessions, and a forum for free expression. A brotherhood of men, and potentially a sisterhood of sex workers closely involved. I have found a derelict lounge for just this purpose beneath the library, who is with me?"

IOW, the Brotherhood of the Monkeys eh

On more than one occasion the New Republic and Galactic Empire had conspired to open a new front solely for the purpose of getting soldiers into the more controllable state of combat fatigue.

Been reading too many "FDR deliberately allowed Pearl Harbor to happen"
conspiracy theories lately?

There were stories of whole divisions transferred to Coruscant that sat and sat for so long that they deserted and disappeared from the Imperial order of battle, fading into the deep recesses of the Imperial City to live a troglodyte raiding existence.

Sounds like a good life, stealing, drinking booze, and having fun

"You stay, David," he growled, turning to Crayz, "Get the Last Days of the Imperial Palace, unedited version."

Does that include destroying Palpatines sex toys and call girl lists as
the Rebels smash down the outer doors and enter the Palace?

Pablo faced Crayz again, "Three-day pass."

"Easy enough," the slicer said, "Just crack this password prompt and commandeer someone's signature... got it."

A sheet of flimsiplast emerged from a slot in the terminal, giving Pablo the right to move through Coruscant almost at will. Without even a word of thanks, the assassin snatched up the sheet and sprinted out of the room, as if he was afraid it would evaporate in his hands if he waited even a moment.

Damn, the fun of having a slicer for a friend...

Damm that was good I'll have to re-read the frist seven chapters to bring me up to speed on this fine fic
Keep up the good work or eles

Not quite as funny as previous chapters but much more timely. And I bet you thought there wasn't a story behind it all.


Suicide Squad
9
Have a Sense of Humor

It was cold, almost unbearably so in the regions of the planet which were uninhabited. They had neither the benefit of the solar mirrors and climate control nor the simple physical heat produced by living creatures. Much of Coruscant was now empty and dark, though its physical damage had long been fully repaired by intensive efforts by the Imperial government. The Imperial city had once been a hub of commerce, which all the great corporations and syndicates of the galaxy locating their headquarters (or at least a major branch office in the case of true leviathans like KDY and Blastech, who owned their own planets) on the surface. But the psychological and economic damage to Coruscant was perhaps permanent. The scale and reach of this galactic war had made a far-flung corporate empire simply unfeasible, except for those involved in defense contracting. Lines of communication were too uncertain, holdings too likely to be overrun or divided. The corporations had disintegrated into smaller and more resilient bodies which could serve local interests without being burdened by far-off possessions--something like what had happened to the Empire herself in the years before the Vong.

Then there was the simpler fact: No one wanted to live in a charnel house. There were billions upon billions of soldiers who had died in such numbers and at such a rate that there was simply no way to honorably dispose of them all. They couldn't even be buried in mass graves, because Coruscant itself was bereft of soil; most often they were neatly stacked inside one of the innumerable vacant buildings and sealed into the makeshift crypt. During the battle the planet had been a vast desert, its inhabitants nothing but a parade of men doing all in their power to kill one another, so that their vast impersonal governments could claim dominion over the blood-stained lifeless stone. Now it was just a rock, freezing out with no one to call it home but half dead bureaucrats.

Sanchez knew all these things, but he didn't care, he had never cared. He had started out knowing everything he needed, just like his contemporaries. And just like them, he didn't bother to look for more, because he knew it was a waste of time. They were all dead anyway. A soulless pessimism characterized them; they made good soldiers but better corpses.

"It's fucking cold," Pablo said, and his words became a plume of white.

He stepped onto the repulsor bus and swiped his identification card through the slot. The computer buzzed its approval and the NCO stepped into the much warmer interior of the vehicle. It was half-filled with civil servants and military personnel, the only people that still lived on Coruscant. He took an empty seat just as the bus jolted into motion. The soldier in front of him turned and offered his hand.

"Major Robert Wilson. You look familiar," the man said.

Sanchez glanced at the hand neutrally, "Sergeant Pablo Sanchez. I get that a lot."

Wilson let his hand drop, "I thought you might. Where are you headed?"

"Nowhere in particular. Is there any place you know?"

"Oh, I see. Well, then I would recommend the Unknown Soldier Bar and Grill to you, subfloor 80, sector 32, in the Palace. You look cold, you could use a drink," the officer suggested.

Sanchez paled slightly and looked out the window of the bus, towards the north. The grim trapezoidal facade of the Imperal Palace was kilometers in the distance, visible as it towered above everything around it.

"I never liked the palace very much," the sergeant said, his voice somewhat weak.

Wilson's voice was still friendly, but not without a trace of iron, "Nevertheless, it's a very good bar. And everyone has to go by the Palace when they've got shore leave on this planet. It's the most important landmark in the galaxy."

"I see. I'll make sure I get around to visiting it, then," said Pablo.

The major nodded and turned back to face front. He got off at the next stop, while Sanchez rode on.

----

"I'm glad you men are taking an interest in historical films," Leiutenant Antilles said, "it's not every day that a group of soldiers gets to watch a documentary of this caliber. Would you mind if I sat in and viewed it with you?"

The various soldiers eagerly assented and scattered to recieve chairs. A few came close to blows over who would give the young woman a seat, but she got one for herself quickly enough to defuse the situation.

"Alright, you fuckers, I want a three-meter area cleared on all sides of the Lieutenant or I will break your faces," Sergeant Fromage ordered as the lights began to dim. The enlisted men groaned but obeyed.

Björn had got himself stuck operating the projector. He clicked it on.

The holo started immediately, the words 'The Last Days of the Imperial Palace' floating over a pitch blake abyss. They floated up, and a brief description of the beginning of the war flowed past. Simple, secondary school things; the Rebellion, the Imperial Civil war and the establishment of the New Republic, the short peace. Then the Vong invasions, repulsed thanks mostly to the brilliance of Imperial Remnant Arms. Immediately following it, the bitter recriminations against the Republic's early conduct of the war, the Crisis of Public Confidence, and a massive desertion to the Empire. At this point the film was surprisingly candid, as only an unedited version could be: they admitted that no one knew who fire first.

Then the film started in earnest. Scenes of the Coruscant garrison mutiny which delivered the planet into the hands of the Empire. Imperial Torpedo Spheres in orbit blasted holes in the shield, so that Victory Star Destroyers could thread the gaps into the atmosphere and eliminate point targets--with visceral footage of some going down in flames and crushing entire borroughs like giants in their death throes.

It was a very good film, Björn thought. The enlisted men, chattering like monkeys through the scrolling text, were overawed and silent at the sight of such force.

A narrator came on over footage of infantry fighting room to room and dying like flies. Björn had seen the sanitized release version, this was very different.

The narrator said, "At this early point in the war, both the New Republic and Galactic Empire retained the basic military structure which had existed since the Clone Wars. Relatively small fleets, and small professional militaries. The mechanism of universal conscription had not existed in any galaxy-spanning form for thousands of years. Within a month of the opening of hostilities both sides found themselves in the depths of a manpower crisis, particularly on Coruscant, where the fighting was especially brutal. The average infantry division in the Imperial City suffered casualties equivalent to its pre-war effective strength every six weeks. The system could not be updated quickly enough to alleviate the shortage, and reinforcements were not forthcoming. Therefore, the Imperial Army was forced to rely on local emergency levies to shore up it's defenses."

Footage of Imperial officers moving through a prison facility.

"The military governor of the galactic core, Semon Timosniko, ordered that all prison populations be stripped of healthy inmates. These persons, ranging from multiple murderers to petty thieves, were formed into penal battalions--which rapidly earned the nickname 'Suicide Squads.' With armed COMPNOR troops at their backs to ensure no retreat, these men were expended like ammunition to wear down the Republican enemy," the narrator continued, "The reactionary Vader Youth provided another source of fanatically loyal, but tragically inexperienced manpower."

A shot of the Imperial Palace, tiny dots of flame trickling out of many windows and a vast plume of smoke and ash rising away from it.

"The last major deployment of these troops came just as the first levies of conscripts arrived. The remaining emergency levies were sent as cannon fodder ahead of the main assault on the Imperial Palace itself. Those that few survived were folded into regular army units to continue the room-by-room advance, their past crimes forgotten. The fight for the Imperial Palace was the bloodiest of any individual assault in the war."

A white-on-black word popped up again. "Interviews."

----

"Fucking A, I have you now," Crayz mumbled as his fingers danced on the terminal, "give it up, OPabloSanchez.ppd!"

Strowbridge looked up from where he had been dozing lightly, "What, you've got that one cracked?"

"Mmhmm," Crayz said, his hands still racing.

"What does it say?"

The slicer rolled his shoulders to loosen up a bit. He'd be sitting at the console for a very long time trying to crack the file, and he'd finally got it. Now an officer wanted him to read it for him.

"It's right there," Crayz said, and leaned back in his chair for a well-deserved rest.

Strowbridge mumbled as he scanned the document.

He finally spat with disgust, "This shit doesn't make sense. It's a dossier for somebody else, whose been dead for more than fifteen years."

Crayz sat up, "What? You mean to tell me that I just spent five hours of slicing for nothing?"

The captain nodded, "Read it. Name: Pablo Sanchez. Rank: Captain. Date of Birth: 49 AGR. Date of Death: 85 AGR."

The quartermaster scanned the lines rapidly, "I don't know what the fuck this is supposed to mean. Look at his yellow sheet, he was quite the criminal. Five counts of murder in the first, a count of conspiracy to commit murder, firearms offenses. Looks like he got nailed for some kind of assassination and then copped a pardon."

Crayz scrolled down, to find the dead man's combat record, "Shit. His combat record's long as Hell," the slicer said as he let his finger hover over a line of the holo, "Here's when he shed the life sentence: Conscripted in Sesswanna Convict levy, Imperial Palace more specifically. And look at all these unnamed secret operations, type CET. 'Command element termination.' Assassination."

"A bonafide fucking hero," Strowbridge said, "But what the fuck does this have to do with our stupid and unheroic comrade?"

"His record says, 'Volunteered for Family Project, 83 AGR.' I don't know what the family project is, but there are files for it in Sanchez and Yates' dossiers. There could be a connection, and I think I could get them by the end of the day," Crayz replied.

----

The interviews were with the various soldiers who participated in the seizure of the palace. They were a good cross-section of criminal lowlifes, frightened conscripts, and leering psychopathic fanatics from the Vader Youth. Shot on location in dank cellars filled with moaning wounded and devolved troglodyte soldiers, the film makers asked the same series of basic questions.

"Why did you enter the Imperial forces?"

A fresh-faced Coruscant teenager: "I wanted to do my part for the Empire, and for Vader. The Empire is the stalwart defender of all that is right in the galaxy, and we owe them everything."

"What do you think of the Republican soldiers?"

A criminal with dead eyes: "They die like the other people I kill. Just more often."

"Do you ever feel fear?"

A hideously scarred gang member: "Never, man. Never."

It was a good cross-section of the poorer half of the Empire. The rich and well-to-do could avoid conscription through family connections and simple bribery, whereas the young and impoverished had to die. This was the story of the mass infantry levy; money during wartime was the freedom to go on living.

After about the tenth interview, the viewers were beginning to get bored and talked among themselves. They wanted to get back to the violence and explosions and crashing starships and the blood most especially. The fact that these were real people that had really died, people almost identical to themselves in circumstances, did not occur to them. When it appeared on the screen, violence was detached, as if it hadn't really happened. There was a barrier between them and the men on the screen. The Imperial Defense Board had once tried to find a way to find that psychological distance and bring it to reality, so that men could kill without compunction. It was estimated that close to 75% of their conscripts didn't actually fire at the enemy, only randomly in their direction. This was a damned shame and a waste of ammo which could be eliminated if they could only give the soldiers the same feeling they got when they watched the colors of death in a holo. This was a small but significant part of the Family Project.

Interview number twelve was of some immediate interest to the people concerned. Silence enveloped the auditorium, blank shock overcame most of the people there. The soldier in the projection was lounging on a shattered block of concrete, drinking what appeared to be a bottle of whiskey, and not caring that his feet were resting on a corpse.

"Why did you enter the Imperial Forces?"

He said, "I wanted to kill my fellow man, thereby liberating him from the Republic. I wanted to meet interesting new people and burn them down like dogs. I wanted to give something back to the government which granted me poverty, forced me into a life of crime, and condemned me to life imprisonment. I wanted to come to Coruscant and contribute to the destruction of the most important symbol of government and order in the known universe. But most of all, I got drafted."

At this, Dalton laughed, "I guess he wasn't just bullshitting when he said he was in this one."

The interviewer again, "What do you think of the Republican soldiers?"

"They're the same as me, or you, or this dead man," the soldier replied, "we're all meat puppets in various stages of decay."

"Do you ever feel fear?"

Sanchez grinned widely on the holo.

"I've been afraid all my life, so why should I fear death? It'll only be an end to the terror."

----

At the Imperial Palace, he wiped his sweaty palms on his pants. It was still as cold as hell, but he also felt the heat in his extremities and face. He was freezing and burning at the same time. It had been both recent and distant, like everything he knew. He was a walking paradox, not human, not even an alien. Sanchez was in a turbolift. He was not claustrophobic and had never been, but he still felt as if the walls were closing in. He had been here before and he had not. The logic of it drove a spike into his brain and he couldn't tell whether he was sane or not. Staring into that abyss, he couldn't help but be nervous.

Reaching his floor, Pablo stepped out of the turbolift. There had been people on it, possibly, but he hadn't paid any mind to the gray civil servants. They might as well have been droids.

He walked down the hall, totally impassive while his mind shrieked in protest. He could see blaster bolts streaking past him , feel himself sprinting full bore, and then a mind-killing pain in his thigh. It couldn't be this fucking corridor, he had been shot here. What a bunch of bastards. His vision began to white at the edges just as he saw the sign for the Unknown Soldier. He staggered in and nearly collapsed. Pablo began to have dry heaves.

He closed his eyes and composed himself. When he looked up, it was in a dimly lit bar with the a large clientele and tasteful wall decorations. At last, something totally unfamiliar. Not only had he never been in this particular bar, he had never been in a bar that wasn't a dive or an officer's club (which he would be promptly ejected from). Directly in front of him was a familiar face, though not in a bad way.

The doorman had his hair died white and cut very short, and a wicked scar ran from his chin through his left eye socket and on upwards. His false eye glowed a tasteful and calming shade of blue. He could have been Pablo's brother. Without the embellishments, he could have been Sanchez.

Pablo looked at the man, "Why did it have to be here?"

"So we would always know you were the real deal. It wouldn't be difficult for the Ubiqtorate to make a fake, but the consciousness modules had been smashed--so he wouldn't have reacted as you did. Now, act normal, and have a sense of humor. You're a regular here!" the doorman replied, and pointed him to the door behind the bar.

Sanchez walked across the floor, waving back at the people who recognized him. He didn't know what was in the back room; his natural instinct, honed by years of danger, would have been to be more careful and suspicious and to prepare for a quick exit. But he didn't have any reason to fear. He was among Family.

----

Crayz finished the slicing program with two rapid keystrokes. FamilyProject.dev was now open to his perusal.

"Well, fuck me," he said after reading only the first line.

Strowbridge had been napping, but he awoke almost instantly, "Wh-what is it?"

The slicer shrugged, "What is it? It's clones, sir."

Hmmmm I actually never read this before..........

DAMMMMMMMMMM!
This whole fic still kicks ass!
I love chapter 9
Keep up the good work

The closing chapter, friends and enemies:



Suicide Squad
Final
Incident

"Each clone was given a name drawn from the same culture group as its source material. For example, copies of Colonel William Carpenter were given names common to the Coruscant core area. The proper names Robert, George, Gregory; the surnames Wilson, Smith, Miller, etc. etc. Clones of Ubiqtorate Special Agent Truong Quang were given names such as Phong Nguyen, Phuoc Giap, etc. etc. Because the population of each group reached the number of permutations available from the names, each subject was also assigned a number. A clone of William Carpenter might be designated Major George Miller #32012," Crayz read aloud.

Strowbridge was lying on the floor napping, Björn had returned from the holo showing and still had some interest in the document, though it was rapidly waning.

Paulsen moaned, "Can't we get past the damn nomenclature? I don't care about it."

"It's important," the slicer replied, "because a person's name is a window into their soul. How would you feel if your name was Pablo Sanchez Six-Seven-Seven-Oh?"

"You know, he really didn't seem to mind, so why should I care? Tell us about why they chose the source material, the Captain-Assassin."

"Okay, we'll come back to the names later," Crayz said as he hopped back to the index of the Family Project document. He searched down to where it explained the choosing of Captain Sanchez.

He cleared his throat with a phlegmy hack and commenced to reading again, "Subject was chosen because of natural martial talents. Prior to military service, subject was an assassin for the Black Sun crime syndicate, who was finally arrested after the successful elimination of an Imperial Grand Moff. After release from prison on a military pardon, he distinguished himself in battle and special operations, and displayed latent force sensitivity, leading to selection for the project. It was hoped that the clones would inherit the capacity for force manipulation, but the it did not transmit genetically and the clones displayed only minor force sensitivity. This led to a drop in effectiveness, but average combat capacity and exceptional assassination skills led to a limited production run of 15 million units."

"It's like rounds of ammunition," Björn said.

"Defective ones," Crayz said before continuing, "'After-market testing and polling showed that the Sanchez model showed an unacceptable tendency for mutiny, despite a self-loathing fatalism. Remaining models are designated for in-combat expenditure, with no further production planned.' As of three months ago, they're down to about five million still around."

"Ah, good. That must be what that thing with the Nguyen slicer killing Knopf and trying to get us was about. Using one clone to kill the other," the medic said.

"You've interrupted me again."

Paulsen snorted, "You were being boring again."

"Oh! Well, what would you like to hear about now, your exalted highness?" Crayz asked theatrically.

"Read me a bedtime story, mommy," Björn said acidly, with a glance at the snoozing officer.

----

When Sanchez walked back into the barracks where the platoon was staying, he got nothing but stares. What a bunch of fuckers. Earlier in the day, he had nearly had two heart attacks, and now they were giving him the evil eye.

"What are you fucking dickheads staring at?" he shouted. Some of them ran away, the rest just continued staring. He didn't remember being that scary.

Then he remembered the holo he had given David. Oh, right.

"That's right, men, I am the walking talking piece of immortality. Get out of my way, unless you dare to hazard the abyss!" he shouted again, "and where the fuck is Corporal Dalton?"

Someone shakily pointed the way. As he walked past, Pablo waved his arms mysteriously at the soldier.

"I hex you, a curse upon your house," the sergeant said gloomily.

He stomped off down the corridor. He was pissed off, because people were looking at him differently, because it was cold, and because he was probably going to die tomorrow. He had been in that state of consciousness, the state where he was going to die tomorrow, many times before. But it had never been as permanent as this time. This time, he was supposed to die gloriously and in the pursuit of something grand. Before it had been for this ball of mud or that patch of dirt. Pablo resented the change, because after all that time he had gotten resigned to dying for nothing. It took moral fortitude to die for a cause, all that it took to die for nothing was bad luck.

Eventually he ran across Dalton, together with his gunnery assistant David. The two were disassembling a T-21, cleaning it, and preparing to reassemble it.

"Hello," Sanchez greeted them.

David looked up with the same dead stare that Pablo had been getting for the last ten minutes. Dalton didn't look up.

"How's it going, clone?" Rob asked.

Pablo shrugged, "Just fine, just fine. Why do you ask?"

"No reason," Dalton said, "just wondering."

"Listen, Rob, I just got back from this important meeting at the Imperial Palace--"

"What part of the palace?" Rob asked.

"It was in the back room of a bar across a table made of whiskey boxes. You should go AWOL tomorrow. Just pop off for a drink until the Governor-General of Coruscant makes a Holonet address. There's going to be this little coup, you see, and I am going to kill the Imperial Defense Board and various others," Pablo said.

"Just you?" David asked dubiously.

"Me about five million times in administrative areas across the Empire," Pablo clarified, "and who the fuck was talking to you? Anyway, no one will care if you're out of duty during the thing, Dalton, and the platoon is so close to the IDB headquarters that you can't avoid getting called in to die."

"What about the rest of the platoon?" David queried.

"Well, I can't make you forget you heard this, so you could probably go as well. And Dalton can tell Paulsen or whoever else doesn't deserve to die. But don't tell everybody, because if the platoon doesn't move at all the other troops in the area will liquidate you before the Governor-General can declare for the coup," Pablo responded.

"Who's coup is it?" Dalton asked, finally slipping the firing unit back into the T-21 and looking up.

"Some Sith," Pablo replied, "but its mainly a military-crushing-the-bureaucracy thing."

Dalton nodded his understanding, then asked again, "What's in it for you?"

"For me personally, nothing. For me in the larger sense, revenge."

David looked oddly, "What do you mean?"

Pablo sighed, "Imagine that your parents told you that you were nothing but a mistake, an accident. And then they did their damndest to kill you. Imagine that you had no purpose but to kill and die, and it was all your father's fault. That's revenge, my friend."

"This is all very confusing," David said.

"You think you're confused, step into my shoes. I'm simultaneously someone and no one, alive and dead," Sanchez said.

"I won't be going AWOL," Dalton said, "it's not my style to allow evil people to take over the Empire without a peep."

"Your choice," Pablo said grimly, "see you in Hell. Be sure and tell Paulsen, though. He might be smart enough to know not to take us on."

"Tell him yourself," Dalton said, anger creeping on the edge of his voice, "he's up in the library, reading all about your personnel files."

Pablo froze for a moment, then spoke again, "That's what Crayz was doing? Too bad."

He turned on his heel and walked out. Pablo didn't go to the library, he went straight back to the Imperial Palace, and the back room of the bar. He needed to look at the timetables. He remained at the bar until nightfall. That was the time they had settled on.

----

Private Sheridan was on guard duty that night. This consisted of standing in a short tower next to a fence and trying not to sleep. The entire expanse of the vast concrete plateau that the library and barracks sat on was brightly lit by the base lighting, and it would have been impossible to sneak across it. Sheridan therefore had time to play sabaac with his fellow guards and lose his dismal little paycheck.

Then all the lights died.

Sheridan, clearer thinking that his fellows, lunged across the little room and slapped the alarm within a second. Nothing happened. He then turned to go for his gun, tripped on something, and fell to the floor. Then the lights in the tower went dark.

He laid there while his night vision recovered. He heard his comrades stumbling around, then there was a shattering of glass and a flash of bright red light. In the slice of a moment before it disappeared, he watched the bolt transfix another soldier and send him thudding to the floor.

Sheridan decided that he would continue laying on the floor, even after his night vision returned. Midway through his second minute of terror something metallic landed on the floor next to him. Then his world ended in a flash of fire and flying shrapnel.

----

"Move move move!" Fromage shouted, "Get your gear, damnit!"

The dull thump of a grenade had awoken the sergeant. Three other explosions and a few bursts of blaster fire had reinforced the point. Sleep-time was over, death-time was now.

A majority of the platoon had been roused, and they were getting their shit together to defend the base. No one knew why the enemy would attack a library, but there was obviously no accounting for taste. The enemy could appear anywhere at any time, because he was the enemy.

Fromage got his squad together and made for the front door of the barracks. His men piled out, straight into a volley of deadly accurate small-arms fire. Edam clinically identified the threat as being E-11s being wielded by professionals. He dove to the concrete and hid behind a pile of bodies. Soft fleshy cover was as good as he was going to get. The enemy had known precisely where he was going to exit the barracks and had set up to cover it. They were somewhere off the in darkness, scanning for any survivors. A corpse next to Edam twitched and caught two bolts in the torso for its trouble.

Fromage willed himself to become a corpse. Then he realized how pessimistic that was and cursed himself silently.

----

6770 scanned the empty lot through his light amplifying goggles. No movement, the platoon had wised up and was no doubt bunkering down in the buildings. He bit down on his mic trigger.

"Remember who you're taking alive," he ordered.

The other responded with a hearty chorus of fuck you's and whatever's, they knew their business every bit as well as 6770.

He signalled with his hands that they were to move up, now. He would take one squad through the door to the barracks, another would secure the library. As he stepped quietly over the cluster of corpses, he noticed one in sergeant's chevrons breathing lightly. He put a bolt in it.

He bit the mic twice in a row, to connect with the inside man, "Cut the barracks line... now."

----

Dalton was just inside the front door when lights went out. The bastards were cutting the power, and his NV goggles were missing. What a bunch of bullshit that was. He crouched, back to the wall, and set his T-21 at his hip, aiming at the door.

A blurry shape came in, so Rob pumped a good long burst into it. In the red strobelight he saw two human figures crumple. He let off the trigger and charged forwards. He reached the door and leaned around it. In the darkness he could barely hear noises of movement. He fired at the sound, and backpedaled into the barracks. He bumped into something solid but yielding and nearly screamed.

"Dalton?" Yates whispered.

"Yates? Stop fucking around," Rob said quietly.

The other was silent for a bit, and no one came in the door. So Dalton thought it was alright to keep talking.

"Where's David?" he asked the other corporal.

Nathan rustled, probably shaking his head, "He couldn't make it."

"What?"

The warm muzzle of a recently fired E-11 pressed into the base of Dalton's skull.

"Put it down and stand up straight," Yates ordered sternly.

Dalton dropped his T-21. As he stood he heard bursts of blaster fire going off through the barracks, and similar but duller sounds of slaughter in the adjoining library.

"Walk," Yates ordered. Dalton stepped through the door again, onto the concrete littered with bodies. Six armed men in dark uniforms, faces covered with goggles and matte black paint, filed past them into the building.

He stood there above the stiffening corpses for what seemed like an hour, Yates and his gun just behind. Finally the blaster fire stopped, and a herd of platoon members guarded by the dark men staggered out into the night. They stood in a line in front of the barracks.

One of the soldiers in black spoke, "Guess what, fuckers. You're the guests of honor. We started this whole thing early, just for you. You're the first people to die in the coup that launched the Imperial victory. Condolences and congratulations."

Then the others fired. It took all of three seconds, and Dalton was still standing. He looked to his right and his left; of the whole platoon, only he and Björn were still alive.

The soldier who had spoken lowered his E-11 and moved closer to Dalton.

"You understand, nobody could know that it was clones who did this thing, it would make it impossible for Darth Wong to get popular support. You're lucky we decided to leave you alive," he said. It sounded like Sanchez, but it could have been any of five million examples.

"Very lucky," Dalton replied.

The clone sighed and said, "Eight of us are dead. Do you want to know if one of them was the one you knew?"

Björn answered for him, "Does it matter?"

The clone shook his head, "Not really, but here I am."

Pablo folded the stock of his carbine and slid it along its strap to rest behind his shoulder, "7801, 1067, stay here and guard them."

Björn looked at the clone as he turned to walk away and overthrow the current government of the Empire in favor of another dictatorship of the Sith.

"How could you do it," Paulsen asked, "killing all these people you knew?"

The clone paused, and said without turning around, "I never knew anyone, because I've been watching this life as I watch a dream. Pablo Sanchez died years ago, and I was never born. I spared the two I didn't particularly hate, and I would have bailed Kynes and Spickard out, given the chance. That's enough for whatever conscience I have."

The clones walked out, leaving only two of their own to guard Dalton and Björn. After a few minutes, the base lights clicked back on. The two took off their goggles and tiredly wiped black facepaint from the space below their eyes. One of them was identical to Sanchez, the other Paulsen recognized as a Phong Nguyen.

Dalton just laid down on the ground and went to sleep, Paulsen stayed up and stared off into space. Perhaps when this was all over he could go back to medical school. He was sinking into a memory of how much better life had been at university, when the Nguyen stood up and aimed his carbine with the speed and grace of an oncoiling viper and shouted.

"Halt!"

Paulsen looked up and did a double take. Sergeant Liet Kynes stood about fifteen paces away, carrying a pack of personal effects.

"Shut your ugly face, B--uh, whoever the fuck you are," Kynes shouted back, "I just get out of the hospital and I've already got fucking agenitalial wonder telling me what to do. Put the gun away."

The clone was cowed by Kynes's tremendous force of personality and did as he was told.

"What the fuck did I miss here, Dalton?" Kynes shouted.

Dalton shook himself awake, looked at Kynes, and glanced at the bodies and pools of congealing blood.

"Nothing," Dalton replied.

Ah, I see you have stopped being a counter-revolutionary comrade! This lastest chapter will easily entertain the proletariat masses!

Grand Admiral Thrawn wrote:Ah, I see you have stopped being a counter-revolutionary comrade! This lastest chapter will easily entertain the proletariat masses!

You're not displeased with being dead?

Pablo Sanchez wrote:

Grand Admiral Thrawn wrote:Ah, I see you have stopped being a counter-revolutionary comrade! This lastest chapter will easily entertain the proletariat masses!

You're not displeased with being dead?

*Re-reads it*



PABLO, YOU BASTARD!!!!!!!!!!!

I had a very hard time following this chapter for some reason. Though I was able to deduce its lack of me destroying anything via firepower, maneuver and shock effect.

You got a cameo, SS. There's a lot of deserving people (Spyda, Chris O'Farrel, etc.) who didn't even get that, so be happy.

Pablo Sanchez wrote:You got a cameo, SS. There's a lot of deserving people (Spyda, Chris O'Farrel, etc.) who didn't even get that, so be happy.

But griping is fun in addition to being a world pass time. Anyway, thank you comrade for including your glorious GREAT LEADER in this work of supreme literature.