Hull no. 721- a fanfic

[Vehrec]

Nice. Very nice. I sense some slaves may be getting 'escorted' to medical, and then maybe shoved into boxes.

[Phantasee]

Wow. It's hard to catch up on this fic just because you have such long chapters.

I'm going to end up printing this one out, I think.

One or two more pages and I will put it in words.

put it in words? Sorry, I didn't get that.


Also, congratulations, Remnant. Your story crashed Word when I pasted all the chapters in. I only got up to 7

[Vianca]

Wow. It's hard to catch up on this fic just because you have such long chapters.

I'm going to end up printing this one out, I think.

One or two more pages and I will put it in words.

put it in words? Sorry, I didn't get that.




Also, congratulations, Remnant. Your story crashed Word when I pasted all the chapters in. I only got up to 7

I meant putting it (the text) in Word's as the words they are.


Will there be any other type of crash, Remnant?
Preferbly the ships in the story, if you get my drift.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Hi...

Chapter 22 should be up later today, 10-11pm UK time, or tomorrow.
I type each of them as a separate word document; 6-8 pages and 7-9,000 words usually. In Palatino linotype. OK, it was the best pun I could get at the price.
If you want shorter and more frequent chapters, I'll try and do that, but 22 is going to be standard length. 23 is a good number to start a change from, anyway.

I used to do it by parts, I have an old fantasy story lurking somewhere that came in fifty thousand word blocks, but enough people screamed at me about that that I gave up on the format and went to chapter-episodic.

There is definitely more major combat to come. Worth pointing out; as Lennart is going to say at some point during the post battle analysis, they won that one as soon as they convinced the Rebels that it was going to be a smash-and-grab rescue mission.

If the Alliance forces had come in together expecting trouble, emerged from hyperspace say a million kilometres out and launched everything- almost seven hundred fighters, most of which have torps or concussions, and backed by three credible medium and big gun and enough minor warships, that's a straight fight the Empire could easily have lost.

I do see a natural fissure in the Rebel command structure, between the practical modern day guerillas and the slightly romantic old school trying to perpetuate the ideas of the republic they claim to be fighting for; but the old school are the ones who think in terms of major battle, they're going to do the Alliance post battle analysis on this one, and they're going to be right. It's not going to be as easy again.

Adannan wants a force powerful yet compact enough to do it's own dirty work, without having to call for help or communicate to the rest of the sector group- or if possible the Empire. Realistically, working a squadron like that up to efficiency should take months, but they don't have that kind of time. Internal tensions are going to push the pace forward.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have eighty square yards of hessian shield covering and a sea chest to see to. Back this evening, hopefully.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Good grief.

Ch 22

‘For some of us, that could have gone better.’ Lennart said, calmly. ‘Vice-Admiral-‘

‘Gerlen. Domenic Gerlen. This is not a good day for the Starfleet, Captain.’ The vice-admiral said. He was roughly Lennart’s own age- which made him young for his rank, but that was only just starting to show a normal curve.

In the chaos of promotion, demotion, political manoeuvring and growth pains that had accompanied the change from Republic to Empire, it had been not unusual to find sixty-year old lieutenants and thirty-year old rear-admirals. The situation was only really settling out a generation later.

There was also the important question of the admiral’s own trustworthiness.


‘Let me see…one large and one small light destroyer captured, one medium and one light rebel frigate, four corvettes, upwards of five hundred fighters destroyed.

The price, a Golan platform, one light corvette and a badly damaged heavy frigate, and fifty fighters- there are thousands of units on the receiving end of hit and run raids who wish they had such days, Admiral.’ Lennart said.

‘On the absolute scale, for the galaxy, it may have been a victory, but for this sector group it was a disaster.’ Admiral Gerlen said, worried and fearful of his future.

‘Perhaps a wake up call. Admiral, I know you’re not in my direct line of command, but- have you considered the full implications of what Adannan did to your sector governor?’


‘He ordered him mutilated and humiliated; how much more full do you want?’ Admiral Gerlen asked. Lennart could see his brain begin to function again, but decided to spell it out.

‘By making what looks like a classic mistake- he strikes at a prince to wound, rather than kill- he does two things; he begins to build a reputation as a bloodthirsty madman, which he enjoys in itself for the excuses it gives him, and it lays the foundation of a vendetta.’

Half a dozen knee-jerk silly questions passed briefly across Admiral Gerlen’s face, and he suppressed them. ‘Moff Edro Vlantir Xeale is not a being I would pick for an enemy. If there’s a logic behind this that you can see, explain it.’

‘Cover. Anything that happens, almost anything, can be conveniently buried behind this mutual hatred Adannan has just invented. Links to organised crime? Evidence planted by one or the other- or the twists and turns of a desperate, hate-driven man.

Active ties with the Alliance? A powerful being embarrassed and humiliated by his own side can stoop very low indeed. Deliberate exposure of old, buried scandal? Fabrication and conspiracy theory.’ Lennart explained.


‘So by simply fiddling the dates, he can cloak all sorts of things with a simple inhuman sacrifice. That is what it’ll come to, isn’t it?’ the admiral asked.

‘I would expect anyone who rises to that rank to be competent at such things himself; Moff-Xeale?- shouldn’t be an easy target.

Adannan intended to humiliate him and infuriate him just enough to make him offer himself as a target at all. Events will show who gets their way out of this, Admiral. Meanwhile, stuck in the crossfire…’ Lennart said.

‘How long have you known Kor Adannan?’

‘Roughly twenty minutes longer than you have, Admiral.’ Lennart said, cautiously.

‘He murders one man- judicially- humiliates a senior officer of the Empire, offers death threats to another- me!- and positively praises you. Why?’ Gerlen asked, suspiciously.

‘Because he thinks that I have the potential to become exactly like him.’ Lennart decided to admit.
‘Stars around. Well, if that sort of rank isn’t enough to protect a man, who is safe? If a Moff, a Moff for sith’s sake, can’t call his feet his own, what’s left? If loyalty is no protection-’

‘Admiral,’ Lennart cautioned, ‘This is politics played for keeps, and I would advise you to wait until all the evidence is in before using the words ‘Moff Xeale’ and ‘Loyal’ in the same sentence.

Especially, don’t fall into the same trap. You, personally, were threatened. Respond to that by functioning professionally and allowing him no excuse, not by letting him unbalance you to the point where you become a political sacrifice as well.’

‘Of course, man. I know that. Do you think I can’t cope, or something? Ridiculous.’

Perhaps he could, Lennart thought. Badly shocked, he was starting to return- hopefully not to normal.


‘This hunting group he requisitioned- I’ll give you a regulation battle squadron as escort.’ Gerlen decided.

‘Not really enough to do the job. As I understand it, Admiral, what Kor Alric Adannan wants is a force at his personal and immediate disposal, large enough to do dirty work without communicating with, or calling for help from, the rest of the fleet.

That’s a Superiority Systems Force sized task normally, but as a regional support group unit, we have available some slightly different force structures. In particular this, which is what I think would be appropriate to the task.’

Lennart brought up the holoimage of an Objective Pursuit Squadron order of battle.

It was the regional force equivalent of ‘voulnteers- you, you and you.’ It consisted of four lines, a sweep line heavily laden down with carrier-types, two probe lines capable of recon in force- led by heavy frigates or light destroyers- and a main strike line consisting of an Imperator, two other warships usually heavy frigates, and a picket line and pursuit element.

‘That’d gut Third Superiority Fleet, it’d eat the middle out, we couldn’t put that together-‘ Gerlen objected.

‘Interesting idea. Are you explicitly betting that if I have to go back to Adannan with this, tell him about your official view that this is undoable, that he’d land more heavily on me than he would on you?’ Lennart suggested.


Gerlen weighed the odds, thought of Xeale’s feet. He made one more objection.

‘It should be down to the local force to recover lost opportunities. I don’t see the sense of demanding that that is our part, and simultaneously that we release enough forces to him to do it all himself.’

‘Then act in competition, Admiral.’ Lennart said, wondering just how dishonest and self-serving he could get away with being. ‘He came across as a mad dog, but I think he knows better than that. His license to spill blood is the same as, for instance, Lord Vader’s; the greater good of the Empire.

Failures, he has no bag limit on, but his own head stands to roll if he takes down too many competent men. So give him that, and then go and prove him wrong by finding and killing yourself some Rebels.’


Gerlen nodded. Lennart continued ‘Sir, no doubt you have a lot of thinking to do. If we can get the details sorted out with your staff-‘

‘Yes, yes. Wait a moment.’ The connection shifted to a holding screen, the sector group logo. Lennart muted the pickup.

‘What do we want?’ Lennart said, leaning back, putting his feet on the desk. ‘In particular- the Dynamic. Yes or no?’

‘They have a lot to learn, but that leaves them less to unlearn. In theory.’ Brenn suggested. ‘Have her assigned as one of our seconds in the strike line, where we can keep an eye on her.’

Dig out the sector and subsector orders of battle.’ Lennart asked him. ‘See what else we can poach.’

‘Skipper,’ Mirannon said, ‘we have a moderately serviceable Venator that only needs-‘ he looked down at his notes- ‘four point six million man hours of work.’


‘About the same as it would take to forge a working relationship between you and Adannan, then.’ Lennart said, sounding annoyed. ‘I know, you’re a mechanical engineer, not a social engineer, but did you really have to taunt him like that? Come damn’ close, and I can’t work out why he didn’t, to giving him an excuse to lash out at you?’

‘The fact that it worked doesn’t make me particularly happy either.’ Mirannon admitted. ‘I pushed it for the same reason you did; testing out just what we could get away with. Why did we?’

‘I think we can assume it was a conscious decision, for a deliberate reason. He needs us for- something.’ The rest of the command team would be told about the side feed from the main domes, but not here.

‘Wait for the situation to develop as to what. That, and those unarmed combat classes the engineering department was running, reinstate them.’

‘If by ‘unarmed’ you mean ‘every hand tool known to man and a few others we invented for the fun of it’, already done.’ Mirannon said.

‘Good. I wonder what the Admiral’s telling his staff?’ Lennart said- it was taking too long.


‘Captain of the Line, Exalted Sir, I have the breakdown on the sector OB now.’ Brenn com’d from the bridge.

‘Is that so? Well, you just make sure that the accounting office knows too. If I’m going to play junior flag officer then, by the Five Sisters, I am not going to miss out on the going rate for the job.’ Lennart said. ‘What have we got?’

Vineland was a small sector with a lot of through trade, and the Sector Group had been ‘astrographically corrected’ to take that into account. Lesser in size overall- with many understrength commands rather than fewer full strength units, a case of jobs for the boys?

Heavily balanced towards light-medium ships, a lot of older heavy corvette types, only a dozen Imperators- Lennart still used the older term. Gerlen was right; that wouldn’t leave much of third fleet.


The holodisplay changed to a view of a conference table; six staff officers with the same order of battle. One Captain, five Commanders or Lieutenant- Commanders.

‘Captain Lennart,’ the most senior of them began, ‘we have been informed of your intentions. We-‘

‘Four destroyers, and we have two of them already. You have a Venator-class operating as a training carrier, do you not? An exchange. Assign her to us, you can have Penthesilea. Damaged, but not beyond repair.’

‘I protest.’ One of the lieutenant-commanders said, the one Lennart had nicknamed Grumpy. ‘That would disrupt our training cycle-‘

‘Your casualty rate is very low- a shaved percentage point above expected accident rates. If you need a full training carrier to replace the trickle of pilots you’re losing, then there’s something more deeply wrong than shortage of assets. Would you like me to investigate that for you? No? Good.

That leaves us a Sweep Line led by a Venator- and a strike line composed of ourselves and an Arrogant. For balance’s sake- you do have a handful of Victory-III there, do you not? Let me see, their service records- the Perseverance, repeatedly reprimanded for being off station, low personnel turnover- we’ll take her.’


Stunned, blank looks on the faces of some of them, two opened their mouths, thought about what their line of argument was supposed to be, and gave up.

As for the rest- two Meridian, I think, to lead the probe lines.’

‘Repair estimate on Comarre is two point two million hours, Captain.’ Mirannon stated. ‘Eleven and a half days if we do it ourselves.’

Three of the staff officers’ eyes bugged out at that. The standard reckoning was that a fleet tender could provide twelve thousand man-hours a day, a Deepdock eighty thousand per bay assigned.

Mirannon was counting on most of the Engineering department and half of the Legion putting in twelve hour days.


‘Yes, on balance.’ Lennart decided. ‘We’re going to need working up time- probably much more than that, but for a beginning it’ll do.

I’ll expect you,’ he addressed the staff officers, ‘to provide parts and materials accordingly. Other ships I want assigned; Tarazed Meridian, Demolisher- class Tythallin, Guillemot- and there’s a name to conjure with, what’s the Obdurate doing in a backwater like this? Definitely.

Strike cruisers Havoc, Kuruma, Darxani, Blackwood-‘ He ran off a sequence of names as the staff officers looked more and more depressed. If their reactions were anything to go by, his judgement was right and he was creaming off the best.


‘Well,’ Lennart turned to his command team after the conference was over and the link had been dropped, ‘we have an operational squadron. Now we need an operation to deploy it on.’

‘We are working on the assumption that Adannan is up to something dangerous, sinister and dubious?’ Rythanor asked.

‘Technically, no. We are making that assumption, but we’re not working on it. We need to gather evidence for that, in the meantime we play it straight- as, worryingly, he is. Don’t even think loudly about manufacturing it.’



‘Right. Now you put the box down, turn off the repulsor unit- work out for yourself which comes first- and take out the sensor wands.’ Suluur advised.

‘Never done this before, have you?’ Gendrik said, managing not to break his toes when he shut the repulsor unit off.

‘Now remember, look technical.’ Aldrem said. They were in one of the transverse corridors near the base of the tower; staff space. Pure bureaucracy acting as an ablative layer around sensor-interpretation, comms and signals, computing, navigational plot and ecm/eccm control complexes.

Hard against the outer skin of the ship, obviously- no-one but a complete fruitbat would design a ship with internal PD turrets, although there were rumours about some of the early Sienar designs- one team would make electronic noise simulating a point defence battery in place, the others would listen and see how it penetrated into the hull.

All of them thought, in their separate ways, this is crazy. Nobody actually said so, in so many words.
As the control team were listening, they saw a half-familiar figure coming down the corridor.

Long black robe and gown, hood up with a hint of red hair protruding out, figure just hidden enough to get the imagination drooling.


Laurentia saw them standing there, looking like some avant-garde corps de ballet waving scanning rods in odd positions, balancing on tiptoe to reach deckheads, sweeping them following cable runs. A contact and some information. Why not?

She approached the man who seemed to be their leader, who was holding, for some strange reason, a light repeating blaster. His insignia called him a senior chief petty officer.

‘Senior Chief, I wonder if you can help me? I’m on the staff of the Special Assistant-‘

One of them said nothing but his eyebrows rolled back behind his head; one, a female, looked at her- enviously.

Laurentia gave her a small, mocking smile, and moved on. One of them was familiar- in the mass if not in the individual. Line Four, Mod Eleven Mark Nine, one of the later clone lines, one frame in a rapidly evolving sequence- limited production, supposed to be highly optimised, mounted recon/scout trooper.

Only fractionally more of them than there were of her own breed, only a couple of million. He looked back at her calmly, utterly unruffled.

The leader was thinking hard; he had very sharp eyes, she noticed. Not very pleased to see her. ‘How can we do that, Ma’am?’ he said, evenly and officially.

‘I need a computer terminal with level-5 access. Would you know where one of those is?’

All four of them looked at each other. They were trying to look honestly baffled, but only partially succeeding.

‘I’m sorry, ma’am, we’re not cleared that highly ourselves. Comms and Signals is eight decks down, two transverse corridors forward, Central Computing is three decks up and six forward.’ Aldrem said, calm and helpful, but looking at her like he was seeing crosshairs.

‘Oh.’ She said, reluctant to go to any of the heavily staffed, highly monitored main facilities. They noticed. To change the subject she said ‘If you don’t mind me asking, why are you carrying a T-21?’

‘Health and safety reasons, ma’am.’ Aldrem replied, sizing up if he could get the weapon aimed and levelled before she could quick draw. Probably; but there was no good reason to bet his life on it yet. She looked unconvinced, as well she might.


‘We’re surveying for mounting points for additional point defence. The sighting system on this will give us a good idea of fields of fire, and how much baffling the gun mount’s going to need.’

‘Really?’ she said, mildly interested. ‘How does an infantry support weapon scale to a destroyer CIWS?’

The other three tried to think of ways of shutting him up, then groaned as they realised it was too late.

‘In terms of physical scale, frighteningly well, but that’s not the main determinant of bolt power, it’s the material construction of the weapon.

You can almost get away with locally smelted and hardened basesteel in these, but the more power the weapon develops the higher grade of durasteel and quadanium-reinforce it requires.

It’s an indirect linkage, the material strength of the barrel projects and backs the containment field; but that’s basically why starfighter lasers are so compact and put out so much energy,

the weight of them would severely unbalance say an AT-AT, but the field drivers that redundantly swing the turret respond more precisely to a small, dense, sharply-defined mass, which-‘ her eyes started to glaze over, not that it would stop him.


He seemed to ramble on, getting as far as-‘and feedback from the pressurised, or to be more correct ambiently laden, containment field, in composition LTM-291 durasteel gives a stress-strain curve roughly like this.’

Hooking the light repeating blaster up into one armpit- braced on his arm, finger by the trigger guard- and waving one of the sensor wands in the air with the other to describe the graph.

Two twitches, she thought, and that thing is shining right in my eyes and his gun is resting on my bellybutton- even clones have bellybuttons, and she would miss hers if it went away. Especially if it took the lower half of her body with it. These people are obviously up to something.

She decided to file that one for investigation and analysis. One drawback of Imperial uniformity; no nametags. Interchangeability, one rank-and-file was supposed to be very much like another.

Calling them on it would result in- at least one death, perhaps three. Hers, and up to two of theirs. This was one of those times to smile, walk away- and set up an ambush around the corner.

‘Really, Senior Chief-‘ she flashed her eyes at him, hoping he would be that dumb; he refused to give his name. ‘I do have a job to do, and I won’t keep you from yours. Good day.’ She swept off- wishing she could stop to listen, but there wasn’t time.


‘You were looking at her hips.’ Jhareylia nagged Aldrem.

‘I was looking at her holsters. A disintegrator pistol- short ranged and extremely powerful, and a blaster autopistol. Nasty combination. I wonder why they don’t make disintegrator cannon?’ Aldrem tried to deflect the oncoming explosion.

‘Because the barrel life would be so short, you’d barely be aiming on before they burnt out.’ Fendon said. ‘Who was she?’

‘Trouble. You do realise we are more thoroughly blown than an Oseon tumbleweed?’ Jhareylia ranted.

‘There are many, many much less delicate similes you could have used there.’ Suluur said, irrelevantly.

‘Blown like one of the many things you wanted her to do to you?’ she snapped, then regretted it. ‘I knew this was going to be awkward, but this is verging on the ridiculous.

First you show your ID for force’s sake, then you have a long technical diatribe with someone who works closely with the people we are supposed to be kidnapping. How much less covert can this get?’


‘Normally for me, subtle involves stepping down to megaton range blasts. What did you expect from a bunch of gunners?’ Aldrem snarled back, isappointed by her jealousy. ‘Maybe we can manage to hide in plain sight- be so spectacularly obvious, no-one would believe it was us.’

‘When’s your commission due?’ Suluur asked, joking. ‘You’re far too crazy to be a PO.’

‘Chief?’ Gendrik’s voice over com unit. ‘Targets.’

‘Good. I think. Problems?’

‘Yes- they’re carrying one of the damage control crew, who seems to have got in the way of a lightsabre.’
‘Kriff. This just gets better. Herd them in this direction-‘ he glanced at the bulkhead, reeled off the reference number. ‘Then follow on behind them. I think we can still make this work.’


The two Twi’lek were hopelessly lost by the time they ‘came across’ a party of crewmen apparently trying to find insects stuck between the layers of plating.

‘We’re getting interference from somewhere, mobile, slow, could be external, do the rebels have spacetroopers?’ Aldrem improv’d.

‘I’ve heard of space bikers, but I don’t think even they’re that stupid.’ Gendrik said, from around the corner.
The Twi’lek stopped, lost and confused. Aldrem- still holding the light repeater- shuffled up to the male, ran his scanner up the length of him, up to the collar. Helpfully, the scanner beeped.

‘You’re radiating.’ Aldrem told the bemused twi’lek. Looking closely in his eyes. Slightly glassy. No expert on altered states of mind- only a gifted amateur- he tried to gauge the slave’s state of down-troddenness. If that was even a word.

‘We can’t have that. We’ll have to escort you out of the area.’ Aldrem tried not to smile at how easy it was, and the reaction he got from them helped.

The two of them looked- abused, that was the word. Which was worrying. If Adannan had them genuinely and thoroughly broken, that meant they might not know much, and the idea of their escaping of their own accord wouldn’t hold water.

‘Right, follow us, we’ll take you down to the med bay.’ Aldrem tried to sound authoritative. It was a pale imitation of the snap of command in Adannan’s voice, but it seemed to work.


They followed Aldrem, Suluur, Jhareylia and Fendon, with the other twelve bringing up the rear and hemming them in.

‘Pel, I’m sorry I shouted at you.’ Jhareylia said.

‘Oh, don’t apologise now, you’re probably going to do it all over again in five minutes. I have no idea,’ he muttered trying to avoid their overhearing him, ‘how we’re going to get down from the bridge tower without walking right past another patrol section.’

‘Is there no back alley route? No maintenance accessway?’

‘Without alerting them that something’s not right? No.’ Aldrem replied.

‘Then alert them and take the risk.’ Jhareylia decided.

‘That leaves us carrying two crates full of noisy captive and a junior officer in shock down the inside of a turbolift. Amateur acrobatics? I’d pay a lot to see that. I’d pay even more to be allowed not to do it.’ Aldrem stated.


‘What about the garbage chute?’ Jhareylia suggested.

‘On this ship, with Mirannon in charge? Whenever we get something blown off, he melts it down and slabs it on again as armour- or engine bell reinforcements so we can run hot enough to still move.

He even tries to recycle waste heat with thermocouples, and you just do not want to know about some of the things that they do in life support. The chute was sealed up years ago.’

‘So short of having someone walk up to them, point and say ’oh, look, a distraction’, and hope they fall for it, no chance.’ Gendrik com’d.

‘Actually, maybe, I think we could make that work.’ Suluur said. ‘An EM distraction.’

‘Simulate a, what, a problem they have to deal with directly instead of yelling for a damage control crew? That would have to be an internal security problem. Ideas?’

‘Yes, actually. I think this might work…’


The squad on duty at the turbolift cluster, CJ54, were moderately alert; there was always the chance of some stray last-ditch madness by Rebel boarders that they would have to deal with, either directly in their area or somewhere nearby that another unit would respond to, and they would have to shift to cover their area.

Platoon CJ5 were artillerymen; the tactical team was formed from the crews of a Bryn & Gweith Leveller-1 and it’s ammo wagon. They would be well trained and exercised in infantry work, but seldom have had to do it for real.

On the other hand, they knew their explosions, so this had to be convincing.

There was a reflected electromagnetic scream of forcefields colliding as the matter they were anchored to was torn apart; breaching charge, CJ54 decided, several corridors away, the flash ducted by the blast doors.

Rebel boarders. The last ditch madness they had been half expecting. First response; the team moved out, half directly for the point, half flank and reserve.


It was not a confirmed alert- there was little activity after the flare- but they sent out a precautionary warning.

Soon, Aldrem knew, that would be examined by main sensor control, they would realise there had been no external event to cause it, and an internal search would begin. All nineteen of them moved for the lift shaft.

Gendrik and Hruthhal were bringing up the rear. They noticed the Twi’lek’s antennae twitch; regulations prohibited any form of secret communication between crewmembers, officially. Not being xenologists, that was the only reason they knew about twitch-talk, because it was mentioned in the regs.

The two large parts/cargo lifts could each hold all of them; they piled into one and headed down to the level of the medical bay.

The two Twi’lek both looked at Aldrem; Suluur turned round, realised they looked stiff-limbed, glassy, twitching slightly- he bet that whatever anti- theft conditioning they had was about to kick in.

‘Kriff! Pel-‘

The two twi’lek both dropped into martial arts stances, lights on their slave collars glowing, eyes hypnosis-blank; the female lashed out with clawed fingers to try to rip Jhareylia’s throat open, the male dived for Aldrem.


Senior Chief and Master Gunner Pel Aldrem had half a second to use, and he put his trust in his trigger finger.

He fired a two shot burst, tracking upwards, at the female; the first shot hit on the side of her neck- whether blowing the collar off caused a greater mental or physical shock, immaterial, either would have been enough to put her down.

The second shot blew off one of her lekku, as she crumpled to the ground.

The male never made it, as Suluur intercepted him, crashing into him in mid air, as both of them hit the ground Suluur spiked an elbow into the base of the twi’lek’s spinal cord. He thrashed, twitched, tried to get up and Hruthhal hit him over the head with the severed lekku. Repeatedly.


‘Well,’ Aldrem said, after it was done, ‘I wouldn’t exactly call this a bloodless action.’ Most of them were splattered. Cauterisation, yes, but the male had been hit hard enough that most of the clots in the head-tentacle had burst. ‘Are you all right, Lieutenant?’

The young officer would have looked utterly gobsmacked, if his jaw hadn’t already fallen off. Clearly not. Tarshkavik was busy defusing and removing the male twi’lek’s collar, Suluur was checking to see the female was still breathing.

‘Areath? Can you judge these things-‘ Aldrem said quietly, waving with the gun muzzle, safety now back on and his finger of the trigger, at the sensor units- ‘precisely enough to wipe out the lieutenant’s short term memory with an EM surge?’

‘No. Not reliably. Don’t covert operations usually involve a bit less mess than this?’ he asked Jhareylia.

‘A successful operation is one that the other side don’t realise ever happened, usually.’ Jhareylia admitted. ‘Nearly there.’

Aldrem reached out and selected a new level- below the medical centre, down in the body of the ship. Near the armoury, but not in it. He did not want to lock two unbalanced, brainwashed-aggressive beings in a room full of heavy warheads.

‘We go there, we all get out, we set the lift to stop at the medical complex on the way back up. Listen, Lieutenant; this didn’t happen, we weren’t here. If you really want to know, talk to your department commander.’


Laurentia found her way to a facility that should have a high level tie in to the main computer; Damage Control Dorsal-140.

This ship was confusing her badly; she knew her way around the base template of Star Destroyer, but this ship had been modified- or more accurately rebuilt after refit. The first thing she used her access for was to call up a map.

The second was to look through the ship’s transmission logs for the message that had alerted Adannan in the first place, and backtrack from that to find out who sent it. Agents could be anyone, anywhere- ah.
Stormtrooper Corps. Hardly usual, but still.

So, the flight bay. Again severely modified; what had happened to the goal of uniformity? She quietly mocked it whenever she had the chance, but now she was face to face with the lack of it and suddenly realising how much it mattered to her after all. So many, many idiosyncrasies.

She found a corner to wait quietly in- no-one asked her for ID, they recognised her from their arrival, that and the word of what they had done to the tank sargeant had got round.

It was absurd, but she almost felt resentment from them. That wasn’t right at all. They were disposable, they weren’t supposed to have feelings.


The dropship she was waiting for returned- yet again an abnormality; why don’t these people just admit they have secret rebel sympathies and have done with it?

A slightly curved dish shape, no superstructure at all. Carried to war in a bowl. It had been a long time since she had ridden in a drop assault, and looking at the ‘lilypad’ she had absolutely no desire to do so again.

It landed, the edges drooped, the troopers on board dismounted- a company, herding about that many again of rebel prisoners.

One squad in- oh, this was infuriating. They might as well have been holding signs saying ‘hello, we are a special purpose unit’. Iridescent blue-red armour, vaguely reminiscent of the Sovereign Protectors.

How could anyone do covert observation and draw that much attention to themselves? Caution, she warned herself, you’re getting snarky. Just because they’re strange, don’t underestimate them.


They were looking at her. Ten of them- she didn’t know how many there were supposed to be. Two wounded, in fact. They marched in her direction; she waited for them.

As they got within comfortable speaking distance on the noisy deck she asked ‘Which of you is Watcher 22173?’

One of them took off- disbelieving glance at the breastplate, her? helmet, Ren suddenly felt dizzy, already knowing what she was going to see, one of her own sisters looking back at her.

Aleph-3 knew the statistics, in a general way. She and her sisters had been supposed initially to be issued at mobile- divisional level- at the time, that had been a million or so.

Then the estimates had skyrocketed, to account for the units being pulled from planetary defence forces and incorporated into the Grand Armies- then contracted drastically again, as the dawn of the Empire had put an end to any requirement the Stormtrooper Corps might have had to explain to anyone what they were doing.

Only the initial batch had been completed to maturity; most of those planned in the brief surge had been flushed. Fishfood for the ocean lifeforms of Kamino. There had been vengeance for that, eventually.

Some of the remainder had died, some had shown personality instabilities and been discharged, some had found their way into other roles. This was obviously one of them.


Both of them looked at each other, expecting to feel the instant understanding of the identical twin, divine instantly and easily what was on the other’s mind; both of them were horrified when it didn’t happen.
‘We need to talk.’ Laurentia said, decisively.

They found a chamber off the flight bays, a parts storeroom full of racks of disassembled TIE wings. All ten of them came in with her.

‘They all know.’ Aleph-3 said. ‘You’re on Lord Adannan’s staff?’

‘His media analyst.’ Ren replied. Reading between the lines to work out the truth behind the reports. ‘You’re the hunter that spotted untapped potential in a man who has been in Imperial service for twenty years. What did you see that no-one else did?’

For a long horrible moment, Aleph-3 weighed the situation and realised she absolutely did not want to tell her sister the truth. She barely wanted to admit to herself what it was.

‘We re-interpreted the data to produce an alternative explanation. The more we tested that alternative against the facts, the better an explanation it seemed.’

Aleph-3 began, actually hoping she had drifted far enough away from her sister that she couldn’t read her. ‘Captain Lennart has a reputation as a fighting fool. A frothing madman, capable of victory against appalling odds, but unsuitable for any higher responsibility.

The longer we spent on board, the more of a chance we got to look at those victories, and realised that most of them were won with a dexterity and finesse that simply did not square up with his reputation.

Now, false reports of success from officers covering their vulnerabilities are far from unknown; there are entire divisions of the Ubiqtorate tasked with catching out officers and officials who lie like that.

So we were sceptical, but as we got to know him better, we realised that the situation was in favour of the reputation being the falsehood. How do you feel about your Lord Alric?’


‘I…’ Laurentia began, mental gears clashing. ‘I don’t. It’s irrelevant.’

‘So it doesn’t matter to you whether he succeeds or fails, rises or falls? Really?’ Aleph-3 said, unbelieving.

‘Of course it matters to me. He’s my assigned task.’

‘With all due respect, dear sister- bollocks.’ Aleph- 3 said, bluntly. ‘It’s a common flaw in our line; overidentification with the principal. A convenience to the cloners, a sublimation of something that might otherwise cause problems.’

‘Captain Lennart is your principal; you want him to succeed. So you made him out to be a force user?’ Laurentia said, cattishly.

‘You think I’m indulging in inclarity and wish-fulfillment? Just because it would be good if it was true doesn’t mean that it’s automatically false. Look at the way he holds this ship together without most of the standard tools of Imperial discipline.’

‘Fools and lunatics for the most part-‘ Laurentia began, then realised it was exactly what her odd sister, whom she could not read, meant. ‘What have you been doing for the last twenty years?’

‘Does time make strangers of us all, or does it just make us increasingly strange?’ Aleph-3 quipped. ‘Legion planning and intel, until the HQ group got bounced by several million droids and I found out I was rather good with a DC-15.

Platoon sharpshooter, sniper scout, forward observer and then special operations from there.’ On her own at the hairy end of the business, in other words. ‘Yourself?’


‘I was detached on consultancy duties early on, then rose through the system in human resources. A headhunter-‘ Laurentia looked at her sister’s E-11- ‘although not in the same literal way.’

‘So you tell Kor Alric what he should be looking for? Look at the pattern. Tell me Jorian Lennart hasn’t been avoiding promotion for the last eight years at least.

Tell me he can hold this ship together, work the system, and fight his battles the way he does, without the force- or some powerful influence- being on his side.’ Aleph-3 tried not to sound passionate, and failed.

‘You are making him sound increasingly unsuitable.’ Laurentia said. ‘If he has a power he does not want to use, is capable of authority he does not want to have- why is he a candidate for the Dark Side?’

‘Good question.’ Aleph-1 added. ‘He served through the Clone Wars; became familiar with the detached perspective of the jedi.’

‘He fears the limitations of the Force.’ Aleph-3 continued, sign-language thanking her commander for the assist. ‘He has no desire to enter the mental boxes the Jedi trapped themselves in. Unless you are much luckier than I, you do not have the first hand experience that could convince him otherwise.’


That was pure fishing, and Laurentia took a second to realise it- her first reaction was one of relief that her sister was not significantly more gifted than she was. Then she realised that was what Aleph-3 had been trying to find out.

‘No, I don’t. Do you?’

If there was a question in Aleph-3’s head that wish fulfilment was the answer to, that was it. She had been telling the truth to Jorian Lennart; she had a tenuous, fingertip connection to the Force. Too little to do anything except worry herself sick with.

‘No, but your principal does.’ She said, picking her words. ‘If your man can convince-‘ fractional pause there while she avoided saying ‘mine’- ‘Captain Lennart that he doesn’t have to gain the Force at the cost of his wits, then it can work.’

‘Why do you want that, personally? You’re not even supposed to have personal wants.’ Laurentia said.
‘Supposed by whom, Sister? You were born to the Legion too.’ Aleph-3 said.

‘I outgrew that.’ Laurentia said, and knew she was lying. Aleph-3 didn’t need to say so. If her defence was crumbling, it was time to return to the attack. ‘Are you involved with him? Emotionally attached?’

Aleph-3 kept her face straight, but only just. Yes, although space knows why, was the truthful answer. He with me? No. Young loves and brief affairs since, Lady Lyria, may she find a convenient sarlacc to rot in, amongst others- but his first and truest tie is to the ship.


The only chance, she knew, was to find or create some circumstance where he actually needed her, had to depend on her for some purpose. Such as being his guide and support as he came to terms with the Force.

Some part of her felt like a filthy pervert for even daring to think of such things, contrary to her duty and the traditions of the Corps.

Another part, the part she used for pretending to be a normal person, had been counting days and years, and chances taken, and feeling a life sliding away. Which was on the face of it ridiculous, heretical, absurd.

Then again, she remembered being told in training that the main driver of true sentience was the ability to deceive. Lifeform versus environment was only the beginning; true pressure to develop was when there was competition between members of the same dominant species.

The human race, and all the other races, only truly learned to think when they began to need to out- think one another. She and her sisters had been bred as the deceitful arm of the Corps, supposed to lie to gain advantage for their hopelessly straightforward brothers in white. Perhaps it was inevitable that she should become a little strange?

Inevitable and forgivable? No, or perhaps only if it works.


Her sister realised it. How could she not?

‘I will report to my lord that this may be a wild mynock chase. That your judgement is compromised.’

Laurentia said- not because she believed it was, what she had seen and heard so far indicated he was a good prospect if wild and contrary; but mainly to score points off Aleph-3.

Perhaps, if he was that interesting, Laurentia would see what she could do with him herself.

[Phantasee]

Hard against the outer skin of the ship, obviously- no-one but a complete fruitbat would design a ship with internal PD turrets, although there were rumours about some of the early Sienar designs- one team would make electronic noise simulating a point defence battery in place, the others would listen and see how it penetrated into the hull.

Just a quick question, Remnant: What exactly do you mean by the bolded part? It wasn't really clear for me, partly because I didn't have a good idea where on the hull they were.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

One of the things I like doing is exploring the lower edge of the technological envelope; there's a reference earlier to the Zerflade Industries' Dart, a starfighter that was basically sold in kit form and assembled in the garage. Yours for 7500 credits.

It originally came from an RP- we were rebel pilots at a backwater base- and it had the (underestimated in context)durability of the TIE/ln, the speed and agility of the B-wing and the sensors and weaponry of a declawed, cataract-ridden tabby cat. We used it to redefine 'cheap and nasty', and it was amazing how it, and a similar graduated range of low-performance third party craft, managed to make TIEs scary again.

I like the things that don't quite live up to spec, don't fill the intended role, don't exactly do what they were intended to. For one thing, it's an open playground; whatever it is, it wasn't canon, didn't appear on screen or in the official literature- because it was worthless junk.

For the second, it gives so much more appreciation of the things that do. That campaign ended when we got so desperate we were prepared to frag our own boss for a chance to fly a Y-wing, tried, failed, shopped ourselves in to the Empire, managed to work the publicity, were hailed as having 'seen the light' and overjoyed to end up in TIE fighters.

There are no, or at any rate very few, transhumans in the Star Wars universe; people are still pretty much people, and I tend to assume that they still pretty much make mistakes as usual. Including technical mistakes.

I have to admit to a technical failing of my own here; the narrator's voice is not entirely stable, and tends to be tinted by the viewpoint of whoever's centre stage at the moment.
At that point, it was Pel Aldrem, and he's thinking about a drafting error on an early batch of Sienar- built warships, probably the Interdictor actually, where the hull was extended to meet a revised requirement- but it was done by adding extra decks, and the design wsn't error checked properly, leaving several sensor grids, shield emitters and point defence turret mountings buried five decks under the new outer skin of the ship.

The error was caught and fixed at the yards before construction began, no production Interdictor suffered from this, and it's faded away to the status of an urban legend- assuming it wasn't simply a rumour started by Kuati agents in the first place.
[Of course, this is just a fanfic-ism, there is no canonicity to this whatsoever- although I would not be surprised if a relatively inexperienced design team did make mistakes like that. Worse yet, a team specialising in something else, with just enough grasp of their new subject to make really impressive mistakes.]

Pel Aldrem's brain is firing at random at this point, he's basically out of his depth and muddling through, and this bubbles up to the surface. Each of the two subassembly teams is in parts of the tower near the outer skin, making noise, and the main control crew is moving around listening for it. Incidentally, Mirannon's backscatter-from-the-domes idea would have picked up all of the incident. When Aldrem told the damaged lieutenant to check with his department commander, he didn't know about that, he was just hoping that Mirannon had enough sense to cover for them.

[Vianca]

Of course, this is just a fanfic-ism, there is no canonicity to this whatsoever.

Which makes this fic one of the best non-canon-fic's I've read.
It's just to good.


ps: Will the Black Prince be one of the three pivate owned Star-Destroyers at the time of the Trawn Trilogy?
Boosters Errant Venture was one of those three ships.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

As promised, a shorter chapter.
Vianca, thank you for the vote of confidence- but have you read many of the other fanfics available on here?
I wish I could honestly say that I thought I was that good, but I look at some of Imperial Overlord's stuff and start drooling.
Never mind that listen carefully, and you might hear the nearby approach of a thundering herd of B-36.

As far as the three privately owned Star Destroyers go, that just screams West End-ism; a ballpark calculation, 1E25 watts for 10,000 seconds, the nearest round number to the full power combat endurance of an ISD, gives a fuel requirement of 1.1* billion tons, of extensively/expensively processed hypermatter, yet.
If these ships are to fight, rather than merely deter by threatening to fight, their fuel needs have to be filled somehow. Their endurance is enough to cope with everything else except that.

After Endor, things get simpler in a way, but right now, the Empire is still in full flourish. If this goes catastrophically wrong, and the endgame is written in pencil so it may, Lennart's more likely to draft orders for himself to take off for the Unknown Regions, as independent as he can manage but still nominally plugged into the Imperial logistic net.


Ch 23a

‘Squadron Leader, would you like a moment alone?’ Yatrock asked him. Franjia was, if it was possible under the oxygen mask, blushing.

Aron was trying to think of a comeback when there was the sound of feet landing on the deck behind him as most of the squadron jumped to attention. Group Captain Olleyri.

‘At ease.’ The fighter group commander more-or-less ordered. He surveyed the situation and decided to proceed as if on the automatic assumption that everything was going to be all right. Cheerfully breeze by the difficulties.

‘I’ve got more than half a mind to hang up my hamster hat, now. Doubt I’ll ever be able to top that.’

‘All you need is shoddy enough opposition, Sir.’ Aron said, joking.

‘And changes to the accounting procedure- d’you know, back in the Clone Wars-‘


‘You did your first tour on Aethersprites…didn’t you Sir?’ Franjia said from the bed. She thought she was poking fun; in fact, it was true.

‘Actually, I did, but it was just as they were going out. Anyway, used to be that if yours was the killing shot on a carrier, you got credited with the fighters that went down with it.

Not any more, kriff the bureaucrats. I’m going to need at least two, could be four new squadron commanders. So are we going to have to wire all that junk into the cockpit with you?’ he said to Franjia.

‘What- me? Now?’ she asked, wanting it but not quite daring to believe.

‘Yes, you. Gamma One’s mostly in a bed over there-‘ he waved an arm in the general direction, far too many partitions in the way to see- ‘with bits of him in half a dozen buckets. They mentioned something about epoxying him back together. Recovery time in years.

Kappa’s CO, Murqilzen, got zorched outright. If I go desk-piloting, Alpha needs a new leader. Jandras, you’re ex-Interceptors; you can get Gamma. The Hunter’s pretty close to fighter performance, and that was the plan anyway. Rahandravell, as soon as they unplug you, you move up to Epsilon One.’


‘Sir, I-‘ Franjia began.

‘Group Captain, I didn’t think I was going to say this, but I’ve got attached to the Starwings. Can I-‘

‘Hunter’s only a hair slower than the TIE/ln. You’d never be able to keep up in a Starwing, you’d be six-fifty ‘g’ short. What I really want to do is find something to replace the Bombers with, but it’ll never happen.’ Olleyri said.

Despite repeated attempts, nobody had managed to come up with a bomber that carried more payload, with greater accuracy, for less expense of credits and maintenance time than the TIE/sa.

The Starwing could do the same job and fight it’s way through a defensive screen besides, but the time, space and money they took to look after was more than the cost of replacement TIE bombers.

‘Have you seen this, Sir?’ Aron handed him the article, a handful of crumply sheets of hardcopy.

‘When do you think they would make a press release like this?’ Olleyri said, not bothering to take it.

‘Way in advance, to raise money?’ Yatrock suggested. He was about to move up to being the senior flight commander; he was happy.

‘They’ll be looking for a ta-daah! moment- raise interest…just before they offer them as an option.’ Franjia suggested.

‘How long were you awake?’ Aron asked her.

‘While…couldn’t get my throat to work.’ She said.


‘We’ve known about this for ages- had feelers out for months, trying to make sure some of the service test items came our way. Then we got a first look at some of the spec sheets and tried even harder to get out of it. There may be a few interesting bits, but we have enough problems, right now especially. We-‘

There was a sound of boots hitting decks, again. ‘At ease.’ Captain Lennart; he found their bay.
‘Ah, Antar. First, your flying career’s over. You’re a dangerous maniac.

Second, I find myself compelled to let you set a bad example for the rest of the force. We’re being reinforced up to Objective Pursuit Squadron, which means I need an air commodore.’

‘So- first ground me, then promote me? Does that make sense?’ Olleyri asked.

‘No. On paper, you’re being promoted to a non-flying position- but face it, that was a kriffing bad example to set. There’s a reason you usually fly in formation.

Speaking of which; we should have between the ships of the group a hundred and two squadrons. Mostly /ln, but a high proportion of others. Get as much practise as you can in as a controller.’ Lennart said.

Olleyri looked closely at his commanding officer- who he now technically outranked, as far as he knew. Lennart hadn’t put his new set of squares up yet.

Normally almost treasonously casual, he was being unusually snappy, and trying not to fidget. ‘Skipper, are you OK? You’re jumpy as a regallian sand flea.’

‘Very possibly not.’ Lennart said. ‘You might as well get it done while you’re here. Everyone on board is going to be put through a midichlorian count. I am not looking forward to the results.’

‘Midichlorians? For…force sensitivity?’ Franjia asked.

‘Yes, you don’t know. We have a senior official with us, an adept of the Force. He’s recruiting- and with special reference to you, actually, Antar, you might want to abandon any plans you have for Rahandravell for the time being.’


Olleyri took a deep breath, gave up on two lines of argument, and said ‘The reason, sir?’

‘The dark adept’s personal pilot was a female cyborg. Senses and reflexes heavily enhanced. He decided she had let him down- by failing to sneak up on two starfleet destroyers- and took away her antirejection meds.’ He knew this because of the first results from the sensors.

All those present grimaced. That would be a particularly nasty way to go. Then Franjia realised what he was getting at and went white.

‘No, he’s not going to pick you as a replacement, not if I can help it.’ Lennart said, bitterly.

‘You were happy to send us undercover to spy…on the rebels.’ She said.

‘That is going to require some nifty retroactive filing to avoid having attention drawn your way, too. I knew there was a reason we kept the ship’s offices around, instead of converting them to something meaningful like a bantha farm.

We’re outrunning our own planning here; making clumsy, instinctive responses, not looking far enough ahead at all, not at all.

I’ll do what I can. And yes, as far as I’m concerned, Adannan probably does count as the greater threat. At least the rebels would only have had you shot.’ He nodded to them, they saluted, he left.

‘Don’t worry.’ Aron said to Franjia. ‘I’ll break the rest of your bones if it comes to that.’ It didn’t come out right, but she knew what he meant- that he would fake, or make, the evidence as necessary to preserve her from that.

‘What have we come to,’ she said, ‘when that starts to sound like…a good idea?’



Lennart’s next port of call was something he had been putting off for far too long. His executive officer. As he headed for the lifts, one of the big cargo turbolifts slid open, and in it was one man, uniformed, huddled on the floor. One of his junior engineers.

‘You, Surgeon-lieutenant.’ Lennart pointed at the medic he meant, then at the injured man. ‘See to him.’ Coldly holding his temper in.

What you know in the head but have to live in the heart before it sinks in, he thought. How easy it is for Adannan, in his turn, to provoke me by striking out at members of my crew.

What was it I told Dordd, when he was made up to Captain? You need your crew to think for you? Never truer than now- and I hope they have. I hope they can come up with something.

There was no place for the exec to be except in his cabin; he was not under arrest or anything like it, but he had a task to complete before he got his job back, so he would be there, doing that.


For a moment Lennart wondered what would happen if he wasn’t, if Mirhak-Ghulej had cracked under the strain, gone walkabout, and he was forced to launch a ship-wide search for his own exec; that would not look good. Sod’s Law made him actually expect it for a moment, but no. It was the bronze-faced man, in a bathrobe, who opened the door.

‘Captain.’

‘Exec.’ Lennart walked in; the room was full of droids sitting at computer terminals. Ah. Plan C, then.

‘So. Have you learned anything about the men and women theoretically under your authority?’ Lennart asked him, pointing at the terminals, looking at one of the screens. ‘Did you give them a set of instructions to follow? How often do you check their work?’

‘Sir, they are running to a set of algorithms derived from Imperial Fleet Manuals 18-A through C, 22-D revision 5, 34Q, 56, and 71 through 77.’ Mirkak-Ghulej said, coldly.


Have I dented that mask at all? Lennart wondered. Made any real impression on him? The publications he was citing did not make a happy list- Dress, Discipline and Deportment, Permitted and Forbidden Relationships, the Manual of Conduct, Dealing with Civilians, and the long unhappy series of Crimes, Defaults and Transgressions.

Those last especially made grim reading, so much so that Lennart often had them used as a punishment in themselves- minor offenders were forced to read them, full of pain and misery and deadly threat ready to be handed out for anything except walking the straight and narrow path of official good behaviour.

Generally, once they curled up into a ball and started whimpering, they were allowed to stop. Some of the time.

‘So let me see a representative sample of your conclusions.’ Lennart said. Dordd handed him a datapad. It was the master index; long list of names, colour-highlighted in yellow, orange, red.


Lennart checked to see what they meant; caution, formal reprimand, disciplinary action. There were few unhighlighted, no action, and even fewer green, commendation. ‘Tell me this is a jest. Please tell me that you have not been this imperceptive and unresponsive.’

Mirhak-Ghulej paused, thinking about it, while Lennart fiddled with the menu options, hoping to bring up the one that said ‘ha ha, fooled you’ and revealed the genuine set of reports. It didn’t seem to be there.

‘Captain, like any good Imperial officer, I did what was asked of me.’

‘Did you?’ Lennart said, coldly. ‘The first- no, second- instruction is a very simple general rule; succeed. What effect do you think the demotion, degradation, imprisonment and execution of so many would have on the effectiveness of the ship?’

‘Negative in the short term, of course, but in the long term-‘

‘In the long term, this ship would be finished as a fighting unit. If-‘ the lightbulb went on in his head. ‘Very cleverly done. Do you really think it wise to go quite so far in making an enemy of your commanding officer?’


Protesting that he didn’t understand would be futile. Mirhak-Ghulej knew exactly what Lennart meant. The captain continued ‘You know, the worst punishment for your trying to end-run me like this might be to let you do it.

Of course you know about the special assistant to the privy council; what part of that do you imagine means he plays by the rules?’

‘He is a senior official of the Empire. How could he not? Order is Empire, Empire is Order.’

‘Do you know, you’re actually beginning to scare me? I do my best to make the empire sound like a good idea to the people we come across- as per manual 56- but your total absorption of the party line, it’s as if you had it…tattooed on your hindbrain…where’s your file?’

Lennart pushed one of the robots out of the way, sat down at the terminal, called up his executive officer’s personnel file. Cracked open the parts only he was technically allowed to see, including the medical files. No, apparently.


‘I’m not sure whether I’m more worried by the fact that you appear not to have had radical neurosurgery inflicted on you, or that you behave in a way that made me expect that you had.’ Lennart said;

Mirhak-Ghulej made no reply. The captain was skimming the background section of the exec’s file. Ah. That sort of made sense.

‘I think I understand now. You come from a very hostile, low-population planet, yes? Constant care required. Your skin was a deliberate- and insufficient- attempt to adapt.

Your people lived on a knife edge, weather conditions not far short of a permanent extinction event, superheated winds, defences requiring constant vigilance. Somehow you found yourselves on the side of the Confederation.’

Mirhak-Ghulej sat down on one of the desks. Lennart carried on, watching his exec carefully. ‘Like most such colonies, the need for absolute diligence, absolute discipline, is hammered in from the moment you’re born.

Then the war, and the assault, and the catastrophes- the breaching of the domes, and the terrible slow deaths, your adaptations just long enough to prolong the agony. In the name of galactic Order. How could that be?’

‘It was a mistake! A misunderstanding! If you follow the rules, everything will be all right!’ The mask cracked.


‘No, you won’t- there’s an entire galaxy to prove you wrong. The Republic followed the rules, after all.’ Lennart pointed out.

‘And it died and was replaced by the Empire. You see? Order is all.’

‘Order saved you, brought you to maturity, then violated everything you ever knew, and opened up a whole new galaxy of possibilities at the same time- small wonder that you cleave to it as though the concept was the only thing in your world.

I’m not surprised that you hold to it when reason, sense and circumstance dictate otherwise.

This ship doesn’t work that way. We are supposed to be supremely orderly so we can function as a bulwark against chaos. Large parts of the Imperial Starfleet are; I find it far more effective to simply dive in.


You forget, I was there when the Empire was born. Many of us were, and saw the codes and regulations being drawn up.

Those manuals have a hundred battles and a generation of tradition behind them now; not much, but more than the Republic had in the random scuffles before the Clone Wars.

As the Naval Orders and Instructions appeared, they were dissected in every wardroom in the Fleet. The whys and wherefores taken apart with an untensioning plane.

‘Reason trumps mere order, and the reason behind the severity of all this lot-‘ gesturing at the computers- ‘is because the natural-born crews of the old republic were a shambling mess, and the clones were organised and efficient.

‘Imperial military discipline is basically an attempt to force the rank and file into the mould set by Line One, Mod One. The politicised high command thought it was essential. I don’t. Never have.

Ordinary men and women can rise to the challenge. It takes brutality and iron will to beat them into shape, to null their minds until they can be as immobile in rest, responsive to your will rather than their own at need, as the many Fetts. But-‘


‘Exactly!’ the exec interrupted. ‘An iron will, utter total dedication, beyond self. Overcoming the merely human to become the fist of the Empire.’

‘Personally, I’ve always wondered which lucky sod got the job of Imperial tickle stick…’Lennart replied. ‘I come from what even I have to admit was a permanent rolling cockup of a fleet, we were overjoyed to have competent clone crews to work with, and beating the new men into the same pattern- for some individuals, that actually is what you have to do.

Given the manoeuvring room, I far prefer to begin with and build on what shreds of willingness to serve they arrive with.

I’ve been extraordinarily lucky in spending such a long time in command of the same ship, and having a chance to mould them to my own standards. You’re the sixth being to serve as my exec during that time.’

‘What happened to the other five?’ Mirhak-Ghulej asked.

‘One moved on to command his own destroyer, one to command system defence network Owainne. One died in action. One to a training command, one transferred to sector group staff and planning. I haven’t transferred anyone to the psych ward. Yet.’


‘Captain, are you implying that you consider me mentally unstable?’ Mirhak-ghulej stood up.

Lennart took a deep breath. He was going to have to do this the hard way. ‘No. Exactly the opposite, in fact- you’re too stable. Why are these people different from you? Why is their view of their duty so very unlike yours?’

‘I don’t know.’ Mirhak-ghulej said, then rallied. ‘In any case, it’s their problem, not mine. I am senior, they have to conform to me. Order, conformity. Correct Thought. Pillars of the Empire.’

‘There is a major flaw in your case.’ Lennart pointed out. ‘You’re my exec. You have to conform to me.’
‘Not when you are out of step with the greater good. The empire is greater than any individual within it.’ He took a short, jerky step towards Lennart.

‘Don’t touch me. First, I would have to beat you unconscious with your own liver, then I would have to have you committed to psychiatric care- where you would be asked the same questions over and over, every day, until you really did go mad…It wouldn’t solve your problems but it might solve mine.’

Neither of them had recent close combat experience, but Lennart was prepared to bet that he could fight a lot dirtier than Mirhak-Ghulej.

This is an order, Lieutenant-Commander. Wipe all this.’ Sudden flare of anger in the exec’s eyes, especially as he had been referred to by permanent rather than acting rank.

‘Pick one hundred crewmen at random. Select one incident in the career of each of them, and write it up in full detail- including what they thought they were doing at the time.’


Lennart’s comlink beeped. Brenn.

‘Captain, hyper-trace incoming. Mass shadow, probable light destroyer, awaiting ID.’

‘On my way.’ Lennart left the exec to his new task, and headed for the bridge. Thinking, in the turbolift; this is bizarre. This is microcosm. I’m having the same problems with my own immediate junior as Adannan is with me. B

oth of us with fundamentally different interpretations of what it means to serve the Empire. I have to fight my viewpoint as if it was the only possible answer, and hope that the truth shakes itself out somewhere further down the line.

I almost hope this is a rebel; it’ll be a relief to get back to simple, uncomplicated ship to ship combat.


---------
And as a footnote- anybody want to be written in? I have two destroyer captains, one heavy and three medium frigates, a small horde of lighter craft, ninety fighter squadrons and two divisions to populate.

[Raesene]

Great chapter - as usual.

I'd be honoured to serve the Empire as a destroyer or frigate captain

[Vehrec]

I'm reminded of somthing else the good captain said. He said that there were just as many worlds on each ship as there were crewmen, that each man had his own world in his head. It would seem that each man instead has his own Empire, with it's own meaning in there. and some of them are trying to enforce it on others. This is what is known as 'politics.' Good work. And if you need it, my name is always availabe for this sort of thing.

PS: I don't know what you would do with a private ISD, but given the size of the galaxy, I wouldn't be suprized to find more than a few of them.

[Phantasee]

PS: I don't know what you would do with a private ISD, but given the size of the galaxy, I wouldn't be suprized to find more than a few of them.

Asking what you would do with a private ISD is like asking where the 800 pound gorilla wants to do.

The answer is, "Anything it wants." I think the same holds true for the commander of a private ISD in the time after Endor.

The new shorter chapters are easier to read, but they leave me wanting more. I'm not sure if it works out better this way, but it's up to you.

I was wondering what happened to the exec.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Next chapter- slightly longer this time, and Raesene, you've been plumbed into this one. Admittedly with a great thick glob of plot smeared all over you.

Ch 23b


In the lift on the way to the bridge, Lennart was beeped again. ‘Skipper, we have a positive ID- it’s the Perseverance.’

An option came to mind, and he couldn’t resist. ‘Plot me a Maximillian’s Doughnut, Mr Brenn.’

‘Sir, are you sure that’s a good idea?’ Brenn replied, but Lennart could hear him grin.

Rear-Admiral Maximillian Tentrada had invented the manoeuvre as an act of desperation during the Clone Wars; it amounted to playing leapfrog in hyperspace.


As an incoming ship was detected, the plan was to plot a circular course in hyperspace, a low-energy ride to nowhere; and set it so that it touched very close to the inbound’s predicted emergence point. As in single digit kilometres separation.

Low energy translated into high speed, on the far side of c. The nav team had to be very skilled to plot it that fast, supremely skilled to call it that close- or else every god who ever was had to decide to smile on them all at once.

Tentrada had been cornered, in command of an ad hoc group of damaged ships being sent back from the outer rim sieges to Gyndine for repair; several of them were under tow or on emergency backup drive, they had dropped into real space for running repairs and two pursuing Lucrehulks had made an attack run.

The flagship, RSS Yalchuriem, was the only destroyer in full fighting order, and he came up with the plan to buy the rest of his charges time to flee.

According to the stories, he had his bay doors open and the fighter wing hovering within ready to add their guns as well when they came out of hyperspace.

It worked. Torpedoes, capital and fighter, cranked out as fast as the targeters would cycle them, main guns fired until they glowed white-hot, into the stern of the lead Lucrehulk from seven kilometres initial range.

The strike leader was left drifting away, crippled and burning, most of her drive and power generation blown out, when the second turned on Tentrada.


Then-Senior Lieutenant and Navigation officer Jorian Lennart had been on one of the ships detached from Task Force Zalith- in transit to the outer rim- to reinforce the convoy.

They had arrived to find a nearly burnt out Federation battleship, the mangled remains of a Venator, and a second Lucrehulk leaking air trying to chase down a scattered, fleeing force.

The four-ship destroyer division managed to nail the Lucrehulk and recover enough survivors from the Yalchuriem to work out how it had been done.

Since then, Lennart had managed it only twice. Well, four times including the missed descent and the hyperdrive casualty. Even odds, and he was in the mood to push it a little.

He arrived on the bridge just in time to hear Brenn say ‘Execute.’ and the viewscreens go to blue-white blur.

‘Under the circumstances, Commander, I think we might want to alter that to a less loaded term. Initiate, no, that would be even worse; Activate? Hmm. Never mind, we’ve done it now. Give me the sensor picture of the Perseverance.’


Largely computer-inferred, of course; the Perseverance was a Victory-III, a KDY redesign of the Rendili light destroyer.

Most of them had been built by Rendili, and they had served as escort/counterparts for the Venator class usually, the first and only version of the 900m destroyer family that had speed worthy of the name.

They had been internally gutted to achieve that, kept at least the bow missile batteries that the Vic-II gave away and added more and heavier guns- similar main battery to the Venator, in fact.

That did stretch the capacity of their hulls; they were a maintenance nightmare, their habitability poor and their endurance limited by mechanical breakdown.

In combat, they were valuable enough to be worth putting up with, but in time of relative peace most sector fleets kept them as reserve. Perseverance’s energy state was shaping up for a drop point half a million kilometres off Ghorn II; cautious, but not cautious enough.

They could make a rough guess at her velocity from her energy state, and a more accurate one from the operations manual.


Dordd’s Arrogant-class had been left minding the battlefield; Perseverance would turn towards her. Lennart was counting on it.

Down in the pit, the link-man to Engineering was frantically trying to attract his attention; Lennart was ignoring him. It would be Mirannon objecting, he could already tell that much.

Then again- ‘Is that Commander Mirannon calling to ask me what the kriff I think I’m doing, or is it something else?’ Just in case.

‘Ah, yes sir, it is the Commander.’

‘Tell him we’re showing off; he’ll understand.’


The Perseverance dropped out of hyperspace; ran an active scan.

‘Captain? One contact and…three, no five, no, yes five destroyed ships. Wait, one of them’s a station, no Rebels, the contact in one piece authenticates as Imperial, and- Kriff what’s that?’

On Black Prince’s bridge, they faded through after transition- emerged low and slightly to port, ninety kilometres off. Point blank. Near perfect. ‘Guns, we are tango’ing a friendly vessel. Weapons safe; OMFCS- bridge target, converged sequential volley, shoot.’

Perseverance’s EW systems screamed as targeting sensor pulses lashed into her; sixty HTL guide beams in rapid sequence, tenth of a second between each, all on the same spot low between the engine bells. More than enough to overload her shielding and rupture the reactor, if they had been real.


‘What happened?’ Perseverance’s captain screamed at his executive officer.

‘I don’t know, why aren’t we dead?’ the exec yelled at the sensors and signals officer in turn.

‘Battle stations, maximum thrust, signal for assistance, focus shields aft-‘ the captain gabbled; all right and appropriate things to do, but said in such a high pitched voice the bridge crew grasped one word in three.

They got the part about engines; cold- starting and running immediately up to maximum output produced a characteristic flare- the unknown behind them sidestepped their ion wake as they raced away like a scalded pittin.

‘Perseverance,’ an authoritative and highly amused voice came over their bridge speakers, ‘This is Black Prince Actual. Consider that your official welcome to Objective Pursuit Squadron 851- Yod. Stand down.’


She kept moving for several seconds, before reducing engine output to one third and pitching to reverse course. The neat, compact destroyer ended facing and drifting backwards from the older Imperator, slowly cancelling her velocity.

‘Black Prince Actual, this is Perseverance Actual, Commander Stannis Lycarin.’ The light destroyer’s captain said, voice slightly calmer now- but still above normal. ‘What did you just do to us?’

A manoeuvre that was never officially forbidden because fleet command felt that anyone daft enough to attempt it, with all it’s attendant hazards, would be better removed from the gene pool. That would be the truth; Lennart decided not to mention it.

‘A subspecies of combat microjump. If we ever have to do it under active conditions, you will be taking your navigational data from us.

Concerning data; prepare to receive a set of briefing documents, department command level and above eyes only- and transmit your statement of condition, ship’s log and personnel files to us. Captain of the Line Lennart Out.’


‘Captain?’ Lycarin’s exec asked, looking at the sprawling, patchwork-coloured Black Prince. ‘Do you think this detachment will be, ah, beneficial for our careers?’

‘I have heard of that ship.’ Lycarin said. ‘Half legend, half horror story. More than a hundred times her own tonnage accounted for. Wanders from sector to sector, barely accountable, always looking for another fight, another scalp. I feel as if we’ve just been ordered to take up formation on the Flying Ralltiiri.’

‘That bad?’ Perseverance’s exec asked.

‘Sealed datafiles received.’ A voice from the Pit- literally- said.

‘Staff conference.’ Lycarin announced. ‘Ready room, now. And scan around you. How many of the ships on your sensor picture survived their association with her?’


Someone else was distinctly unhappy at the thought of close cooperation with the veteran Destroyer. Fortunately, he knew Lennart well enough to express his doubts.

‘Captain Lennart? Captain Dordd, Dynamic. Are there orders for us?’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact there are- you’re technically under Sector Group Anacreon, aren’t you?’ Lennart replied.

‘Detached to transport Kor Adannan. You’re not seriously- give me a moment.’

Lennart could guess that that moment involved moving to his day cabin to avoid having his crew overhear. He was right.

‘Jorian-‘ Dordd hesitated.


‘It’s Captain of the Line now, so we’re still officially on last-name terms. To smenge with it. Let me guess- you don’t want your crew to know how much, or how little, confidence you have in them?’ Lennart suggested.

‘I was expecting to have at least three months to work them up to efficiency. I was expecting to need six. Captain, they’ve been coasting along in barren space, without any real threat, without any real oversight for that matter.

I don’t want to have to say this, but I doubt we could take this ship into any but the most minor combat and come out well. They just don’t know how. They might rise to the occasion, but it would be moral cowardice to agree to bet their lives on it.’


‘I expected as much, but I’m glad you had the guts to say so.’ It had been bitterly embarrassing for Dordd to admit to, Lennart knew. ‘You left before- well.

At this stage in the proceedings, I would rather have a ship of questionable efficiency commanded by a captain I can trust than an adequate standard under unknown loyalties.

That, and at least your problems have conceptually easy solutions. I’ll transfer some of the cadre over to you to give you something to work with, help train your people up, but we have too much need to move fast to let you have that much time- besides, if we leave them out, it could damage your crew's confidence badly enough that you'll never work them up to any real standard.’ Lennart said.

‘I’d be lying if I said I was happy about that, but we’ll do what we can.’ Dordd replied.

If the situation was that delicate, that Lennart was prepared to put up with a ship in as poor a state of efficiency as the Dynamic, then the only decent thing to do was pitch in, and hope he could get his crew up to something like a minimum acceptable standard in time to matter.

‘I’d be lying too, if I said it was all going to work out just fine. Would you settle for “not as bad as you think it’s going to be?”’ Lennart suggested, facetiously.

Dordd laughed, but shook his head. ‘The morale point being that, if you’re still in the mood to take the piss, things can’t be that bad…’


‘See? I told you you would get the hang of this. The one thing that does worry me is your taste in junior officers. The man you recommended to replace you as my XO, for a start.’

‘Vasimir Mirhak-Ghulej seemed like the logical candidate, he had all the paper requirements for the job- what did he do?’ Dordd asked.

‘Only tried to arrest half the fighter wing for a steel beach party. He- well, I have him under administrative punishment and I’m hoping for his sake he isn’t daft enough to take his case to Adannan.’

‘So I did him no kindness recommending him, then.’ Dordd said, gloomily.

‘Oh, perhaps; if this gets him the therapy he needs. Datasquirting to you, incidentally- situation update and operations plan. We’re going to need your ship, we’ll do what we can to raise the standards of the crew.’

‘Given unpaid, half starved opposition with eye problems, we might not do too badly- I suppose you want a statement of condition?’

‘That too.’ Lennart said. ‘You can start with an easy job. Rendesvous with HIMS Comarre Meridian before she drifts too far outsystem, and tow her back to a stable orbit over the planet.

It’s just manoeuvring, no great pressure, no great hazard, something easy to start with. Watch your crew closely, the line between being aware of them and breathing down their necks- no amount of theory can tell you where that is, you have to work it out from experience.

Take time to work with them, but I’ll be running squadron exercises as well.’


Lennart dropped the link, contacted Engineering. ‘What is it, Gethrim?’

‘Sudden surges are a standard method of test, I admit, but did the entire hyperdrive system really need that stiff a workup?’

‘No, but Commander Lycarin’s nervous system did.’ Lennart replied. ‘In all seriousness- Perseverance, the ship we just pulled that stunt on, is probably the only ship we’re obliged to turn our back on that actually could prove to be a serious and immediate threat.

It was worth a little stress to the drives to have them scared of us.’


‘Right. I’m sure you make this stuff up after the event.’ Mirannon snorted.

‘Two problems I need to talk to you about anyway. First of all- the entire crew are going to be put through midichlorian counts. The old ‘blizzard of data’ plan. Can you suggest any method of hiding your and my files in there?’

‘Of course, it’s perfectly simple. We-‘

‘No collateral damage.’ Lennart stated.

‘Stang. All right, give me time to think of plan B. Would the second problem have to do with the trigger happy madman who melted one of his own turret subassemblies, put five thousand hours on our repair estimates and one point four million on the Venator’s?’

‘How much of that did you hear?’ Lennart asked.

‘All of it. Clusterkriff. Not really his fault, although that isn’t going to stop me reaming out his ears with an inspection RPV. They’re in hiding, they need a medic and an interrogator.’ Mirannon stated.


‘They might need a ‘noodle incident’. Worry about that later, and your first priority is that turret. Give me full firepower as soon as you can.’ Lennart said. Glancing around the bridge, Brenn was trying to catch his attention.

‘Skipper, has it occurred to you that this could be a golden opportunity? Adannan has the authority to sanction, oh, all sorts of things.’ Mirannon's basic position hadn't changed, he was merely considering exploiting Adannan before trying to get rid of him.

‘Silver lining round a kriffing great thundercloud, maybe.’ Lennart said, dropped the link.

‘Sensors? Anything?’ he asked.


‘Yes, sir. One trace incoming, fairly close, medium-small.’ Brenn informed him.

What to do to this one? ‘Get me a predicted drop point and-‘

Brenn was grinning. ‘Look at it on maximum zoom.’

Lennart did. ‘Her trace is…feathery. Recent drop out, recalibration for tactical approach?’

‘I think so. Probably a false bounce; begin descent, withdraw, deploy later. Probably close to the planet and part-sheathed in it’s clutter.’

‘Then point us that way. Oh, and tell Mirannon to watch closely, we may need another repair estimate.’

Black Prince rolled round to bring her guns to bear on the planet; there was a partial flare behind her, as of a ship skipping off the light boundary from the far side, it faded; emergence flare milliseconds later. Followed by an active sensor sweep.

‘Nice try. Identify.’ Lennart com’d the new arrival. Demolisher class.

‘Obdurate, Lieutenant-Commander Karl-Anton Raesene. Reporting as assigned to Objective Pursuit Squadron 851-Yod.’ The medium frigate’s commander came on the com terminal; fair haired, embarrassingly- for Lennart- correct in uniform, young and enthusiastic.

Lennart had hoped for that, counted on a ship with a sound reputation having at least some people on board proud enough to do their jobs properly. It was still nice to be right.


‘This is Lennart, Black Prince Actual. You’re the senior unit of your division yet here, and a very fast journey time at that. What were you detached from?’ he asked.

‘Distant escort duty, Captain. We detected a suspicious trace and were in pursuit, in this direction anyway, when we received orders to divert and join you. I assume we can expect action?’

‘Oh, I dare say there may be some possibility of it.’ Lennart deadpanned. ‘Were you part of Obdurate’s crew at the Battle of Zelpher’s Rift?’


‘Yes, Captain. I was a junior gunnery officer at the time.’ The battle of the rift had been a complex operation, between central- Imperial forces and rogue elements of Collophi sector group, on the edge of the outer rim.

Their objective had been an old droid mining operation- both by and for; an attempt to set up a hidden fortress/resource world by the Confederacy, partially complete, cut short by the master signal being taken out in the last act of the formal war.

The renegades had been seeking a bolthole, somewhere to run to. It had been years before the formation of the Alliance, otherwise that was where they would have gone. They tried to scrape up some remnants of the Confederacy instead.


The actual fight had been a running encounter battle, loyalist and renegade scout groups clashing with each other across two hundred and fifty thousand cubic light years, force units breaking up and reforming, the situation beyond both sides’ ability to control.

Obdurate had distinguished herself in defence of a troop convoy, when she and the standing escort had fought off a Victory- I and crippled her.

Outmassed six to one, out- teratonned twenty to one, the medium frigate had performed well above herself and been transferred out to a regional support group; how she had found herself here, in this backwater, was a question Lennart would have to put off asking for now, but not too long.

‘Briefing documents will be sent over. The short version- lots of Rebels.

The larger units of the formation will be spending most of the next fifteen days repairing damage and working up; I’ll want your fitrep, but I intend picked medium and smaller elements to be responsible for perimeter security and preparatory reconnaissance. If you’ve come even close to maintaining Obdurate’s standards, that means you.’ Lennart informed him.


‘Sir, we’ve been doing escort run after escort run. We’ve prevented a few attacks, chased off some pirates, but we haven’t had much opportunity to heat up the guns. Give us that, and I think I can promise you a happy crew.’

‘That’s what I wanted to hear.’ Lennart said to raise a reaction, looking closely at the holo image to discern if Raesene wasn’t just feeding his superior officer an acceptable line of hooey. Apparently not.

Well, probably less than he himself usually did, anyway. Little twitchy, though, he’d go over the recording later, just to satisfy his own suspicions. ‘What’s your loadout?’

‘A mixed armoured batallion- navy troopers, not stormtroopers. Mostly repulsorlift. Two squadrons of TIE/ln, one of TIE Bomber, one of TIE Sentinel.’

Good; the Sentinels were freakish- looking craft, something like a light freighter cockpit mated to a TIE chassis, designed for long- duration sublight cruise as system patrol craft.

Very few of the Empire’s current crop of customs and light system defence ships had any kind of disabling ability; one type didn’t even carry enough troops to make an arrest.

That detail would take work, but a quick-response, long-haul fighter with ion cannons to back them up was an at least semi- logical fix for half the problem. They had some missile ability, and supposedly there was a full blown strike fighter variant in the pipeline- Vigilante, Phantom, something like that.


That was a future problem. For the meantime, there was a job to do.

‘During the action, we detected a rebel observer ship roughly 90 light years out. They’re likely to run some kind of recon sweep through here, for post battle analysis if nothing else.

We have engineering work to do, so you’re the response element. Chase them off, chase them down if you can, but don’t let them lead you more than half an hour’s transit time away.’ Lennart instructed.

‘Aye, Aye, Sir.’ Raesene replied, a little too enthusiastically maybe. Lennart attached the sensor- picture of the rebel observer ship and broke the connection.

Their ‘engineering’ work was, to all intents and purposes, scavenging. Kestrel, the rebel Recusant, had been cleared, nobody on board; Penthesilea still had a prize crew.

Work teams from Black Prince would raid both ships for spare parts and expendable ordnance, drain off their fuel cells, and any specific systems they thought were worth appropriating.

Mirannon already had a design prepared for additional bracing around the axial defence turret mounts- reinforcing two of them to carry one each of the Recusant’s prow superheavy turbolasers. The Venator’s torpedo launchers would go, as would the parts and tooling for any particularly useful elements of her fighter wing.


On Obdurate’s bridge, Raesene turned to the two Imperial Security Bureau men who had remained carefully out of shot.

‘He accepts you.’ The senior of the two said. ‘A good beginning.’

‘This is a filthy business.’ Raesene replied. I don’t know why I let you talk me into this.’

The junior of the two started towards him, the senior held him back, and said ‘For the sake of your own ambitions, of course. There are millions of men of your rank, and you have risen as far as you ever will- unless someone takes an interest in you.’

‘I know,’ he admitted, ‘but why did it have to be you? Spying on my own superior officer, it feels more like betrayal.’

‘You are far past the time to back out. Turn away now, and the best you could hope for is to remain in obscurity.’ The younger of the two said, in tones the said he was looking forward to demonstrating the worst.


‘Jorian Lennart is a renegade in the making.’ The senior man said- grey haired, round faced, grandfatherly until you looked into his eyes. ‘He is not a rebel, not yet, but he is certainly guilty of severely incorrect thought.

It is your duty to assist the Empire in this, part of your oath as an officer as well I believe. Your ship has a fine reputation; an offence in itself, but still, an aid in this, it makes it more believable.’

‘So,’ Raesene said, taking his life in his hands, ‘who smiled on your career and moved you up the ladder? There’s an officer of the privy council on board that ship. If he alone isn’t enough to keep watch on a renegade and do what has to be done, what are you doing trying to second guess him, and who for?’

‘I’ll let you hurt him later.’ The senior agent said to the junior. ‘Lieutenant- Commander, you would be wise to stop asking questions like that- before you become more trouble than you’re worth. Conduct yourself as a loyal agent of the Empire, fulfil your end of the bargain and we will all come out ahead.’

They left the bridge then- the naval trooper guards saluted them as they passed.

All come out ahead except Lennart, the frigate’s commander thought, bitterly. Was it for this that I joined the Empire, to spy on my own command structure?

To blackmail and eventually betray a man and a ship who have hunted down more of the Empire’s open, armed enemies than those security weasels can count to, while they play their backstabbing games?

Is making Commander worth it, if this is to be the price? And if not, he thought to himself, what in the void am I supposed to use for a way out?


-------
In light of that, anyone want to de- voulnteer?
Vianca, I have you pencilled in in charge of the heavy frigate Tarazed Meridian, Vehrec I had you down for command of the fighter group on the training carrier called back into service, the Venator- class Voracious.

The obvious problem with Maximillan's Doughnut is that get the navigation slightly wrong, and you end up close along side- a standard close action, except taking unusually high amounts of energy to get there. Get it badly wrong, and you give away the prime killing position you had hoped for to the enemy- emerging in front of them, in their alpha arc, is never a good thing.

[Raesene]

Being where I am, It's unlikely I'll ever command a star dreadnought - I wonder who or what will kill me ? Adannan, the ISB or an accidental discharge of a very heavy turbolaser which, by coincidence of course, hits my bridge...

Thanks for the inclusion, and I'm very happy with my ship.

[Enigma]

Excellent fic as usual. I wouldn't mind being included too. :) As Edward Nigma and eccentric (almost psychotic) crew member or captain.

[Vehrec]

Hey, training duty was nice. Take 'em in rough, turn them out not so rough. Hopefully, none of them defect or anything that would bring suspicion down on me. So yeah, I'm still in, even if I get fragged and scattered across a cubic lightyear.
I love the idea of Maximillion's doughnut, and the idea that even with a crack crew, it doesn't work as often as one might hope. Is Captain of the Line an Ad-hoc rank, for the commanding Captain of a group of Captains?

[Phantasee]

Oh man, I completely forgot to ask for a part!

Also, interesting that the ISB is involved now. Thrilling!


If you still need people to pencil in, put me down as Phant, or even Caliphant.

[Vianca]

Oh man, I completely forgot to ask for a part!

Also, interesting that the ISB is involved now. Thrilling!


If you still need people to pencil in, put me down as Phant, or even Caliphant.

Do you mean something like: "Phant 'Cicero' Caliphant"?

I know, just got my fancy.


Edit.

You know, it could also be: "Phant" short of "Cicero Caliphant".
The name could be placed in the Japanes(?) way of back-name first.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Slightly longer than short this time, sort of mid- length.
Raesene; Star Dreadnought? Fan-service only goes so far, I am not about to drop a plesiosaur on my plot by handing out a Mandator or Executor- class. Medium-sized tapir, maybe.

Phantasee; you actually like the ISB? No accounting for taste, I suppose. Although considering that you're here, ah, carry on liking whatever you feel like. Any idea what you would want to be fitted in as?

The rank thing; Captain of the Line more or less equates to Commodore Second Class, which is a complicated enough proposition in real world navies without going into what the Imperial Sourcebook did to it.
'Captain', as a courtesy title, fine, but not all Captains are Captains O-6; strictly speaking lower ranks can and do command ships.
A full Captain's command is usually a destroyer or better. Commander for a medium or heavy frigate, Lieutenant-Commander for a heavy corvette or light frigate, Senior Lieutenant for a light or medium corvette, in the majority of cases at least, with rarely a rank's leeway in either direction.
Small groups of ships, or groups of small ships, the officer of the highest rank present is the group commander- if more than one, quite likely in a corvette- ridden light squadron, the officer with the longest time in grade.
For the likes of a heavy, escort or enforcement squadron, a specific group commander is appointed, usually a grade higher than the ship warrants- a full Comander in charge of a division of light frigates, for instance.
For a major force deployment like a normal- sized destroyer squadron, or an unusually tricky situation, one of the captains is likely to be bumped up a grade to Captain of the Line, making him effectively O-7 grade and the most junior and probably temporary grade of flag officer.
A full Commodore has no responsibility for a specific ship; A Captain of the Line is still responsible for his own flagship, as well as all the others. Paid slightly better, and under a lot more scrutiny.


Ch 24a

Hurry up and wait, then get it done by yesterday isn’t as bad as it used to be with stasis technology, but what I really need, Mirannon grumbled to himself, is a time stretcher. Something to put extra hours in the day. The question is, would it take me longer to stabilise and perfect than it would give me back?

Technically, this fell under the heading of ‘other business’, but it was the job he felt like doing.

The “unarmed” combat classes. He was going to be ferociously busy over the next two weeks, making sure the sixteen thousand men he had said he needed to repair the Comarre Meridian worked effectively, didn’t trip over each other and did the right jobs in the right order- and resisting the urge to join in himself with a hypermallet.

Two of his men were sparring with them. Powered down, but still hefty pieces of kit- the whole point of the exercise was to pick the people he could safely leave in charge of the training, while he was busy elsewhere. That and to relieve his feelings about their now- resident dark force adept.

It was not the only bout taking place in Main Machinery-2. Some of the tools they were using were very interesting, to certain people.


There were enough stormtroopers involved in the classes to pass the information up the chain of command, until it was very firmly intercepted by Omega-17-Blue before Adannan could get hold of it. They hoped.

“A lightsabre like object” was the description they had received. This was not as improbable as it seemed- perhaps Mirannon’s force abilities had finally chosen to manifest. Partly, it was a relief- he became their problem rather than Adannan’s.

They brought the flamers and flechette launchers just in case.

As they saw the sparring ground- a rough ring of cleared space in the middle of mounds of semi-intact machinery- they realised that the description was probably an understatement. He was fencing with a plasma torch.


First two on one, then three on one; the blades were not personalised, all dimmed bluish-white, with their containment fields set high enough that they were functioning as blunt instruments, and the jedi- hunter team watched mesmerised at the multi-sided duel.

‘What form would you say that was?’ Aleph-One asked Aleph-3. ‘Is that possibly Juyo?’ watching one blade looped around another and flicked out of the owner’s hand, another battered aside followed by a knee to the groin.

‘Who, Commander Mirannon? Homicidal Madman form, I should think.’ She replied, watching a blizzard of probing attacks tease one of his opponents’ blades out of position for an up-and-under gutting shot. ‘In any case, do the forms of lightsabre combat still apply with welding gear? I’m fairly sure the civilities don’t.’


‘More importantly, what do we do about it?’ she continued, watching the big engineer sidestep a thrust, follow it back, push the blade past the guard position, pivot on it and lay his cutting edge on his opponent’s throat.

‘Is he even assisted? Brute force, yes, that I can see-‘ as he smashed a blade aside, lunged for a touch over the heart, feinted the same trick on the next man, rode the return stroke into a circular parry and disarmed him- ‘but not the Force.’

‘Which may be just as well for all of us.’ Aleph-One pointed out. ‘If he can manage a display like that without it. Try him.’

‘With pleasure.’ She said. ‘I believe it’s even my turn.’


Mirannon had just run out of opponents with his chosen weapon, and called the two hypermallet wielders over- a chief and a leading artificer; when it came to violence, the chief engineer was no snob.

He was aware of the troopers, but too focused to think on it, until she walked directly up to him.

‘You seem to be quite the swordsman, Commander.’ She said. ‘Would you favour me with a bout?’

Innuendo from a stormtrooper, yet. She did have a sabre; the one she had intended to give to Lennart. She slung her rifle and drew it.

‘First blood, or to the death?’ he said, looking at it sceptically. ‘How many power settings has that thing got?’

‘Ah.’ She said. Apart from the on switch, none. The red-bladed ones seldom did. Well, one if you included ‘dismember’.

‘You may have faced them, but you’re not supposed to use them, so I don’t expect you have much training time with that.’ He said, and she nodded slightly.

‘Good with a vibrorapier, good enough to think you can cope with a weapon that’s just different enough to deceive you with the similarities- you expect me to be daft enough to fight someone with little specific skill, with a weapon that can’t be effectively safed, in a sparring match?’

‘Commander, the way you’re throwing that thing around, yes, frankly, I did.’


He wandered over to one of the junk bulwarks, picked up a sheet of light repair plating, said ‘Sign your name in that.’ and threw it at her.

It was base- steel, intended to be used as one layer of a laminate, 3mm thick and half a metre square, Mirannon spun it like a frisbee. She realised what he meant in time to snap her lightsabre on, cut at it as it flew by her head.

Name? What was that? She tried for a quick angular v, two curls, a reasonable approximation of A-for-aleph 3- on a moving, spinning target, she got one stroke of the A and one loop of the 3, piercing through the steel and nearly taking the corner off.

One of the mallet-men swung for it and knocked it down out of the air.

‘Remind me to tell you about some of the interesting things you can do with liquid metal shuriken one of these days.’ Mirannon said. ‘Not too bad, especially if your name is !u. On guard.’


He activated the welding torch and moved in to attack her. The irrelevant things you notice at a time like this. The blade was very fat by lightsabre standards, almost conical with significant internal volume, the ripples in it’s containment field indicated massive internal pressure.

Connected to a belt powerpack, in form it was similar to a very, very early lightsabre from perhaps fifteen thousand years ago. She wondered if he knew that.

Then there was time for reflexes only, as his blade darted around her. A dipping lunge, she pushed aside, started to return to guard position- realised his blade was still moving around and down, about to take her leg off-

she moved to push it out and away, then sidestep back behind her own blade- and he had moved through recovery to a swinging attack on the direction she was moving in.

She shifted stance in midstep, managed to block but left herself totally out of position, swung for his blade trying to knock it clear to give herself time to recover, it flickered out of the way and came to rest against her lower left rib.

‘Again.’ Mirannon stepped back, recovered to guard position, let her come for him.


She tried a quick triple pass, the almost- weightlessness of the lightsabre moving faster than the eye. Pure instinct, pure reflex- perhaps the force, probably not- the first cut at his right shoulder, he batted away outwards, recovered to catch the second sweeping low and upwards,

the third came in towards his right side; he caught it just above the hilt, somehow the blades stuck together, she tried to kick his feet out from under him but he got an elbow to her throat first.

The gorget of her variant armour took it and she managed to keep hold of the lightsabre, pulled it free, rolled backwards- the blade at arms’ length and outwards to avoid rolling onto it and scorching herself.

She bounced to her feet, again wildly out of position, tried to bring the sabre back into line, a perfectly controlled short jab smashed it out of line again and the welding torch flickered back to a spot over her heart.


‘It was you.’ She said, realising. ‘Lord Adannan’s danger sense has been spiking ever since he got here. He’s been assuming it was Captain Lennart, but it isn’t, is it?’

‘On the very few times he’s come down here for this, Jorian Lennart has been moderately good.’ Mirannon admitted, lowering the blade- she turned her sabre off.

‘The skipper has some natural talent, and I don’t doubt he’d fight like a mother wildcat for his ship, but he’s too busy to put in anything like the time he needs to be as good as he could be.’

‘Most of the time we deal with wannabes.’ She admitted. ‘People who feel a tingling of the force within themselves and hardly have the presence of mind or self control to make anything useful out of it.

We were only privileged enough to bring down two genuinely master-level Jedi- and I doubt if they were as good as you are.’

‘Look at the difference between your sabre and this torch.’ He said, holding them side by side. ‘The sabre has count it, one mode. On. None of its complexity has to do with the weapon itself.

This cutting torch, a device intended to do a job, has, amongst other things, a steerable blade.’ He said, demonstrating. It twisted and extended at will. Her eyes bugged out.


‘I could, for instance, soften the blade enough to let yours bite, trap your sabre, and extend the point forward to slice your head off. If you’re standing too far away for that, I can thin out the tip and produce a plasma jet indistinguishable from a flamethrower.

I can punch through armour too difficult to slice, and fan the tip out to undercut it or burn through what’s underneath. I can control the blade precisely enough to engrave copper and whittle wood.

Most importantly, I can choose not to do this if I don’t want to. The basic functionality is sound. All of this with what is, metaphorically, a ploughshare beaten into a sword. Why is your elite weapon of the upper class so feature- impoverished?’

‘I don’t entirely understand what you’re getting at.’ She stalled. She did understand, and it was not a particularly comfortable thought.


‘Are you suggesting that the jedi were missing an obvious possibility?’ she had to ask.

‘No,’ Mirannon said, ‘I’m saying that the sabre is a weapon designed for the mentality of people who sat around all day going “ommm.”

I learnt to disrespect the Jedi for their hazy, unworldly nonsense years before they were made illegal, and although he had to work with them more closely than I did and got used to not saying so, I reckon the Captain feels the same.

He believes, and so do I, that to learn the ways of the force now would lessen him overall, by taking too much away from what he already is.’


‘You were trying really hard to put that politely, weren’t you?’ she said.

‘If you would prefer ‘get your jedi powers here, free frontal lobotomy included’, I could say it like that.’ The big engineer stated.

‘And if the so-called light side of the force was the only option, I’d be forced to agree with you.’ She said. ‘It isn’t. The Jedi Order was, although I doubt they realised it, in an awe of the Force that amounted to fear.

The age-old, permanent enemies of the Jedi were those who did not choose to suppress their passions, or their wits, to gain the Force. The few who chose to live in the world rather than apart from it. Men like Vader, like Adannan. People the Jedi hated- for surpassing them.’

‘Nice pitch, but it isn’t me you have to convince, it’s him. That is not going to happen- because he doesn’t trust you. He believes that you are as much a pawn of the Imperial system as the Jedi ever were of their setup.

What would you defy that for? If it isn’t him, he’s not going to take your word on the subject as anything other than the voice of the system.’ Mirannon said, feeling unusually out of his depth.

This probably did count as ‘social engineering’, and although he hated job title dilution in a way only a man responsible for a hypermatter reactor could, he was prepared to concede the sense of it just this once.


‘That’s more than just a theoretical statement, isn’t it? You have some appallingly stupid bit of dirty work that you can’t manage by yourselves.’ She said, with more scorn than it deserved, because he had touched a nerve. He was probably right, kriff him.

‘I should have realised you were too good an actress for me to lie to.’ Mirannon said. ‘Mind you, you’re not too good a swordswoman. I need to know where you stand.’

‘In case you decide it ought to be in several pieces? I should dare you to try.’ She said, more defiantly than she felt.

‘It’s seldom wise to threaten a man,’ Mirannon said, ‘with a remote control for the ship’s compensator systems. It’s a simple question. Do you want him badly enough to stand by him when the dreck hits the turbines?’

After what she had said to her sister, there was only one consistent answer. It terrified her- but perhaps better that than a lifetime of regretting not saying so. ‘Yes.’


And there, it was said. Now all that was left to do was go and play Ruusan roulette with a blaster carbine, or wait for the inquisitors to catch up with her which was probably about as much a guarantee of death- either that, or try to live up to it.

Mirannon looked almost as surprised as she was. ‘Good. In the new workshop spaces along the port flank, there’s that bit of dirty work waiting for someone to go and do it.’

‘I could just recant and walk away.’ She said, large parts of her mind telling her that it was a good idea.

‘You won’t. Turn your back on your old life, you have to reach out for the new. Don’t screw it up.’ Mirannon advised.

I won’t.’ She turned to go, then as an after thought turned back and said ‘You know, Commander, you have an interesting line in recruiting technique. A combination of emotional appeal, moral blackmail, and lethal force. Almost like a Sith yourself.’

‘Gah. Don’t be so elitist. There are lots of people who use that combination.’



When his orders reached him, Group Captain Konstantin Vehrec was indulging in his favourite pastime; antique flying machines.

The CV(T) Voracious was based over Altyna V, a large gas giant with what amounted to a planetary system worth of moons in it’s own right. It was an excellent place for crowded space and multiple planetary environment training.

One of the worlds was a partial terraform, an attempt to keep a working ecology going to support a major mining operation- which was there, and the terraforming made difficult, because of the tidal stresses Altyna-V-b was subjected to.


Volcanoes in the middle of green fields were a depressingly common sight, and Vehrec was racing towards one batch at just under mach 3, seventy metres up.

His aircraft was a chemical powered job, single stage to orbit turboscramrocket- the last transitional stage on the way to true spaceflight.

Corellian in original design, aerospace bomber by intent, supposed to operate on the fringes of the atmosphere, the replica he had put together turned out to have surprisingly good nap of the earth performance.

It wasn’t as if he needed the adrenalin for anything else, after all. So he might as well ride a huge blended wing delta laden with volatile chemicals, at slightly over it’s own wingspan off the ground, at sanity- denying speed into broken terrain littered with sharp hillsides, gas, ash and the occasional flying lump of molten rock.

Anyone whom he could be bothered explaining to would already understand. He was a geriatric by fighter pilot standards, a decorated veteran of the Clone Wars, not a clone himself- although he had narrowly avoided being used as a clone template.

At least, he thought he had, he hadn’t seen too many younger iterations of his own face around.


They hadn’t invited him to this war, he was officially past it. That, unreliable, or both. He had retired five years after Mustafar, as the supply of new targets dried up to a trickle, and gone into business as a cargo hauler.

Done fairly well, too; he had the rank and the connections to make it as a legitimate trader, without having to resort to the grey economy- although he had been sorely tempted at times, just for the sake of the thrill of it.

That, and it was always fun to watch the reactions of the customs boys when he opened the hatch and they came face to face with an Imperial Cross that they were required to salute.

It had palled after a while, though, and when things started to heat up again with the various armed movements that got themselves a political face and turned into the Rebel Alliance, it had been an easy decision to sell up and rejoin the Starfleet.


Working his way back to his former rank hadn’t been too much of a problem, but it was frightening how few of his former wingmates were still in the service. They new breed called him a maverick, a barnstormer, and wouldn’t trust him with an active combat command.

So they gave him the air wing of a training carrier, that he could use to warp thousands of young minds. He wondered sometimes if there was any being in the universe to whom that made sense.

That, and too old for combat- bollocks. When he had sold the freight business, he had spent the credits on rejuvenation therapy. His senses and reflexes were as good now as they were when he had been eighteen, maybe better. Which only added to the perceived unreliability.

Perhaps they had a point. He was old enough and wise enough to know exactly how stupid low altitude high speed flight in a (currently) airbreather through volcanic terrain was, and here he was doing it anyhow.


Technically, it was a bombing run. He had two probe droids to drop down volcano mouths on behalf of the miners, which made this a legitimate civil cooperation and propaganda exercise- not that he cared greatly about the thin veneer of officialdom.

Roll round one hill, climb briefly over another, throttle back over a ridge then thrust down the fissure valley, and above all feel the air, this delicate primitive thing- only molybdenum coated steel after all- bucking and jolting over a black kaleidoscopic wilderness of cooling lava, trailing a mile-high roostertail of dust and ash behind it.

He would literally crucify any trainee TIE pilot he found being this stupid, but he had more hours in his logbook than some of them had been alive for.


Flick of the wingtip, round one hill to the left then bank right past another, aircraft kicked in the belly as it briefly entered and left ground effect going over the saddle; hold it down, remember the area- he had treated it as a simulated strike.

One fast overflight for visual and sensor recording, descend behind the horizon to strike altitude, roll in with the terrain as cover, kick one probe out in a deceleration capsule from very low overflight- that would be accompanied by a shoal of defence suppression missiles on an actual target- extend out, dive-toss the second probe and roll off the top and break for orbit from there.

Partly to let him watch the effect. The probe released perfectly into the basket- steered itself into the volcano mouth he slung it at in a slight bank. His com beeped; no time now.

Zigzag out- skimming off the thermal from one volcano, allowing that to help roll the aircraft down the next canyon, rear cameras recording the plume of lava as the massively armoured probe started to swim down the vent.

Break left round a steep hill, climb for altitude- ramjet mode struggling in the polluted air, gaining thrust as it climbed out of the vog, rolling out to high speed and medium altitude, then a hard bank round to begin the zoom climb to lob the next probe into the second volcano mouth.


The com unit beeped again, he ignored it- he was busy. Tomorrow it would be time to go back to teaching combat manoeuvres, if he was lucky and the latest batch were ready for that.

If not, back to formation and gunnery. Right now, if he was irredeemably branded as a barnstormer, then by stang he was going to barnstorm.

Slight change of plan. He had a head up display marker and the probe on manual release; waited for the point in the air, then released the probe on it’s ballistic arc- then rolled off the top of the climb and dived after it.

He chose his margin of safety and ran it out, skimming a thousand feet off the peak and five seconds ahead of the probe, actually passing underneath it on it’s way down.

It plunged into the caldera sending a shower of lava splattering high into the sky, and Vehrec firewalled the engines on his way to orbit. If only they would let him do that with proton bombs.


Transition to rocket on the edge of atmosphere, not a problem, and chase the low orbital transfer station where he had parked his fighter. For all the multi-mach performance of the transatmospheric bomber, it’s absolute abilities had more in common with a kite on a string than they had with his late-model Avenger.

He had docked the antique and was heading back to the Voracious, free time over and ready to resume the daily grind, when he finally remembered to check his com.

It was a recorded transfer order; as all the orders concerning the trainee pilots were copied to his desk, he more or less tuned it out. Heard it all before. It was only when he heard the words “Objective Pursuit Squadron” that he paid any attention at all.

That was a heavyweight combat force, often amounting to a light destroyer squadron; Sector groups hardly ever formed them. Some lucky smegger was moving up in the world.

Then his brain did a fast rewind to the start of the message and he realised he wasn’t the ‘cc’ this time, he was the primary addressee. He, and the Voracious, were going back to war.

It was only vacuum that prevented his howl of delight being heard back on the planet.



‘Captain,’ Shandon Rythanor said to him, ‘we have a potential issue.’

‘With what?’ Lennart asked his sensor chief.

‘The minor craft, skipper, the light and medium corvettes. Remember the Identification and Designation Regulations of ’20?’

‘Of course.’ Lennart had been on the staff at the time. The point of them had been to curb the number of minor ships, the military- conversion corellian corvettes and the like, commissioning with names almost ludicrously far above their station.

Names like Leviathan, Behemoth, Deathbringer, Vengeful, Devastator- a fair few of the names which had since been applied to destroyers.


‘Do you remember the first response to the problem?’ Rythanor said, smiling.

The alphanumeric strings that had been hung on the smaller ships, medium corvette and below, had not exactly been popular, especially not with those crews who had their ships de- named. Correct Thought had not been the bugbear then that it was now.

‘Of course. Nicknames, unofficial names. Nose art. You’re not telling me-‘

Rythanor called up a sequence of images, of small Imperial warships, sporting nose art. Lennart watched.
‘All right, this is almost acceptable, “the masked discombobulator” isn’t so nuts. ”We distrain upon you” has a certain wit. ”Fuzzy pink rancor”, though- this is getting worse.’


‘I know.’ Rythanor said, bringing up the nose art of the “Polyfather of Eristic Excess.”

‘That’s…interestingly anatomically impossible. There are public decency laws I can use to have that turbolased, you know.’ Lennart said, grinning at the sheer cheek- or cheeks- of it.

‘It’s not the strangest.’ Rythanor said, reaching for the pointer.

‘I’ll view them all later. How do they get away with it?’ Lennart marvelled.

‘Don’t ask me, but it’s going to make squadron battle reports sound kriffing odd.’ Rythanor pointed out.
‘Yes, in practise this is just going to be too silly.’ Lennart said, choosing not to formally mention that he approved in principle.

‘Draft an order, all ships to be referred to by tactical numbers- 851, parent formation, Yod, subformation, A through D for the lines, number within the line counting down in seniority. That and somewhere, in the staff sections of the sector fleet, there is a maniac.’


‘Sir?’ Rythanor asked.

‘Whoever was responsible for these, either failing to prevent them or who actively encouraged them. Find them for me.’

‘Aye, aye, Sir. Are we delivering a letter of protest, or of commendation?’

‘Neither. A mind which ran this wild is a mind we might want to know more about. Once you find them, ask them what else they know about what these ships have been up to.’

‘So we’re looking for a loose cannon in Patrol Type-Command? I’ll start narrowing that down.’

‘When you have it down to a hundred or so possibilities, just call them. If they answer ‘yes?’, they’re not the target. The one who picks up the com and says ”Maybe?”, that’ll be them.’



-------
Normally I like to let things bubble out in the text as far as possible, but this is going to require some explanation ahead of time. Enigma, that's you.
E. Nygma is a 'semi-retired' Lignyot (Imperial Intelligence cryptographer), who, ah, the stresses of the job caught up to him. They are a notoriously strange bunch and probably the only part of the Star Wars universe the Riddler would be able to walk up to and get a job offer from.
After largely unsuccesful rehabilitation which failed to significantly reintegrate his personality, Doctor Nygma was transferred to the Ubiqtorate's equivalent of DVLA Swansea. He was embedded in a semi- covert role in the support services of a sector group with something to hide, and basically told to work out what they were up to by spotting patterns- do what he used to do, at a much gentler pace and far lower stress levels. Occupational therapy, to slowly rebuild his talents. A plague of illegally sanctioned and anatomically intriguing nose art is among the least of the problems this has caused.

[Enigma]

Great chapter. Thanks for including me.

[Raesene]

Raesene; Star Dreadnought? Fan-service only goes so far, I am not about to drop a plesiosaur on my plot by handing out a Mandator or Executor- class. Medium-sized tapir, maybe.

Nice twist with the force-sensitive

A Star Dreadnought would be the career goal of some young officers and definitely one of my alter ego; I didn't expect you to drop it into your story
I'll be looking forward to the 'medium sized tapir ' - sounds like an Allegiance or even larger...

[Vehrec]

Hypermallets? Have you been inspired by the Mark One Sledge? Will the engineers be shouting "maximum power"?

In other news YE-HA! However, if the trainees are coming along, we may need a bit more than just two weeks to bring them up to speed. Maybe we should start combat manuevers now, and cram for the next two weeks. 14 hours a day sound good?

[Phantasee]

Excellent chapter. And yeah, nice twist with the Force sensitive.

I think Caliphant would be a nice name for an officer. Maybe a pilot?

If I can't have that major a role, I wouldn't mind being the XO of some ship. Preferably not on a ship that is on the wrong side of Lennart, though.

Ooh, could I be Vehrec's XO?

Also, I am not a fan of the ISB. I'm sorry if I was unclear. I was just thrilled that we have Adannen, who is pretty much his own side, or on the Sith side of the Emperor, and then we have Lennart and his crew, and then we have the ISB, which is the Chancellor side of the Emperor. Along with the other sides. I was happy that you had added another potential conflict into the story, because I don't like when stories have so many sides, but it all really comes down to Red vs Blue or us vs them.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Of course I've been watching The Last Bastion; not being here for that myself, I even went back through some of the threads in the Hall of Shame to work out who this guy Wayne Poe was jumping up and down on actually was. I was impressed by Captain Neral's restraint, under the circumstances.
On the other hand, he did seem fairly jaded with Imperial service. "It's not like we were going to get promoted anyway"? Obviously that's what being assigned to the Death Squadron does for you- another good reason for Lennart having spent considerable time and effort avoiding it.

The 'hypermallet' is a contraction of Hypersonic Mallet, it uses focused ultrasound shockwaves to push and break things- or possibly cause bubble formation and collapse, releasing enough heat to fuse them together? Haven't quite worked that out yet. It looks like a cluster of small, thick-walled speakers on a stick, with a powerpack at the other end. Closer to a Mark Eight sledge than a Mark One. Light enough and lethal enough to be pretty useful for hitting people as well as machinery, anyway. Although you're still better off with the Mark One in a vacuum.

'Maximum Power' is actually a serious problem; almost all of the changes to Black Prince have involved adding bits. Some of those bits have, or will have, power requirements enough to mean more secondary reactors have to be fitted in, more fuel for them- the end result is, I reckon a standard Imperator can manage a straight line acceleration at least equal to it's immediate predecessor, and probably equal to the fleet assault ship Acclamators- 3500 'g' as a working figure.
Black Prince is overweight, down to 3,240 and that's with reinforcement to the engine bells allowing them to run slightly hotter than normal. Mirannon's final plan includes mounting additional secondary ion engines on the after faces of the hull extensions- the port extension is already done, the structure is there but the thrusters aren't. That should bring her back up to speed. (Worth noting, the Tector- class pure gunship version must suffer from the same problem, in spades.)
Lennart's far more likely to say it than Mirannon, anyway. He'd do it with numbers.

Voracious has an interesting problem; because of the multiple environments within reach, she and the platforms that constitute Naval Air Station Altyna serve as a home base for refresher training and exercises, advanced as well as basic instruction, and because of the sheer size of any sector group there's almost always something going on.
So, apart from the instructors, there is a cadre of experienced pilots within reach; but they do not form a well organised group, some of the junior recruit classes are so raw it would be irresponsible to take them into combat, and the mix of never-removed old fighters and hard- used training birds is more interesting than it is coherent.

These are problems that it will require determination and improvisation to overcome. Group Captain Konstantin Vehrec is notably cavalier regarding his personal safety, partly because he's still pushing the limits of his abilities- seeing what the combination of long, long experience and rejuvenated reflexes let him get away with- but he wouldn't expect those under his command to get away with taking the same risks. He would probably be quite smug [read; arrogant triumphalism on steroids] about this, too.

Oh, yes; as far as replacing the TIE Bomber goes, in line with now Air Commodore Olleyri's comment- and there is going to be rivalry there between them, you can bet on that- basically, there are two threats to face. The enemy fighter screen, and the enemy ship's own weapons. Boat-types, large heavy fighters like the EU's dubious M-type, H-wing, Zephyer, Starhammer and H-60 Tempest could carry turrets to hold off enemy fighters, although not all of those mentioned do, but they are all big enough to be LTL bait. The Falcon withstood a surprising number of hits, but I doubt she's exactly typical.
The way Imperial thinking seems to be going is towards fighter-bombers; craft like the TIE Hunter and Sentinel (ancestor of the Phantom), missile armed Avengers, the Starwing and whatever may come out of further development (hint, hint), eventually the Scimitar which is at least a better antifighter performer than it's parent.
Also, interestingly, depending on how far out in the EU you want to look, there are two Zerstoerer-fighter types which seem optimised for use against heavy attack craft; the ten-gun version of the Interceptor, and the a comic- observed version of the Avenger with visibly much larger guns. Some of this should find it's way into the story.

Add; sorry, Phantasee, you posted while I was still chipping away at this. Point taken on the ISB- although I'm sure some of them are just cops, doing more good than harm in an ordinary policeman's job, the political end and their upper levels of command...doubleplus-ungood. There are a few sides involved, yes- at least three nominally Imperial, Adannan and the powers of the dark side, Lennart and his people, the Moff. Other forces not directly committed enough to be sides, but which can still be used by the players against each other- Dr Nygma's Ubiqtorate background is going to be particularly relevant to that. And don't forget the rebels, they still have something left to say with explosions.

As far as a part goes, that would do nicely. Group Captain Vehrec's starfighter force, not starfleet. He commands the air group, not the ship, so he needs somebody to drive the boat for him.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I apologise for the preceding slab of randomness, it was posted at an absurdly early hour and in the face of sleep deprivation. Anyway, new chapter.

This is going to be a weird one, because for the first time a character from the main SW cast makes a (cameo) appearance. Probably, anyway. Tell me how well you reckon this works.


Chapter 24b.

Franjia had refused sedation, and was reading through a datapad. Olleyri had handed it to her, keyed to her touch only. Details of four craft coded on it, not part of the new program they had been considering in the defence daily; part of the establishment answer.

All, in fact, relatives of the Starwing. The first was tentatively designated as Xg-1A Starwing-II; the wings were swept forward, and broadened out at their base to where they seemed to blend with the fuselage.

Repulsors, hyperdrive and shield generators all migrated out of the main fuselage into the thick wing roots to make room for larger engines and reactor. It was supposed to come close to the speed of a TIE/ln and surpass it in agility. It also collected two extra guns, probably heavy autoblasters.

Very nice- if it was possible. In theory, a sensible, solid, valuable step forward. How expensive the thing would be, whether it lived up to the promises, and how easy to look after in practise- if it ever made it into durasteel, they would find out. It looked good, though.


The information on the middle two was very sketchy, for different reasons. One appeared to be so near to entering service, at least in alpha-test form, that all the details were being locked down and heavily classified, even in an internal official document.

Some kind of flying missile dustbin. The other was barely past the concept stage, a true twenty-plus metre gunship heavily influenced by the escort shuttle and a little by the IPV.

The fourth was an idea she instantly fell for. Missiles worked, and worked well for the most part. Normally, a starfighter’s gun armament was limited in usefulness to other fighters, ground targets, and very small ships or those already so badly damaged that they were ready to come apart anyway.


The idea of a heavy gun carrier had cropped up from time to time, most notably with the B-wing ancestor H-60 Tempest which had mounted two short- barrel fleet melee light turbolasers.

It had been a good idea but the rest of the spaceframe had let it down- slow and a pathetically easy target. At least the B-wing could sometimes sidestep fire it couldn’t outrun.

The beast she was interested in was labelled the Xg-2 PulsarWing heavy gunboat. Blended wings with filled roots again, slightly enlarged, and it lost all the rest of the armament and the lower two wings- to accommodate oval faired housings for two full rate Taim & Bak XX9 long-barrel light turbolasers.

The blurb promised the same rate of fire as from a capital ship mounting, and the specifications seemed up to it- major power upgrade, engines to carry the extra weight.

They would be expensive beasts, somewhere in the two hundred kilocred range, but their potential as transport and escort killers, screen breakers, long range snipers- she wanted one.


‘Squadron Leader?’

Franjia looked up; she was still wearing a breathing mask, it was squirting aerosolised bacta and other growth factors into her lungs. She had managed to reprogram the vocoder to her own voice.

‘Yes?’ It was a stormtrooper; as far as she understood the insignia, an assistant squad leader, infantry.
‘One of the other patients, Sir, one of the rebels wants to see you.’

She put down the datapad, thought about it. It was probably M’Lanth. She had to, really.

‘Who’s more heavily wired in, he or I?’ she asked.

‘He is ambulatory, we have him under guard.’

‘Bring him over, Corporal.’


A rebel sandwich emerged, M’Lanth on a mobile drip and instrument stand being hustled along between two stormtroopers, another two behind him with blasters levelled.

They were quite aware of how she had found herself in the medical complex- they had been part of the boarding group on Penthesilea- and they were taking no chances.

‘Before you open your mouth,’ she said to him, ‘I want you to know that I’m in here because one of the madmen on your side tried to blow out one of your own ships, with four thousand troopers and seven thousand rebels on board. Now rant away.’

That took the wind out of his solar sails for a moment, but he recovered. ‘How could you do it? How could you just blunder over to us, say all those things, get us believing you, shoot at your own side, all- fake?’

‘Poor security.’ Franjia said, bluntly, hoping that would be enough to get him to go away. It wasn’t. ‘We were picked because the Captain thought we would be plausible, ordered to do it, ran on nerves throughout and we were kriffing glad when it was over.’


‘The fact that you had to resort to backstabbing tricks-‘ he began, forcefully because he knew it made little sense.

‘Resulted in thousands of your people becoming prisoners rather than dust.’ Franjia said. ‘I know some of them might prefer to die in battle, I would, but I’d suggest you consult with them before advocating that.’

‘Don’t you dare lecture me about the chances we face opposing the Empire.’ He said, heedless of his escort.

‘If you can manage not to get yourself shot, I might tell you about some of the chances we face working for it. This is no time for principled defiance, so pull up a chair.’ Franjia virtually ordered him.

‘Thank you, no.’ he said; the stormtroopers pulled one up and shoved him into it anyway.


‘I wanted to see what they were doing to you. How they were treating you as a failed defector. Then I hear that you’re being praised as a hero for feeding us the bait that led us into a trap.’

‘Lower deck rumour. We didn’t even get a mention in dispatches- largely because the captain knew we would be ashamed of it.’

‘How can you use words like ‘shame’ after what you did- how can you even pretend to have a sense of shame?’ M’Lanth asked.

‘Funny, isn’t it? I’m supposed to be the sterile, faceless technocrat, and you’re the one who’s supposed to derive their mandate from the common people. Perhaps it worked because you’re closer to us than you like to think.’ Franjia taunted him.

‘We fight for a cause, the cause of freedom.’ Standard issue rebel doctrine. He wasn’t that daft, but he was stressed enough to cling to it like a mantra.

‘Really?’ she laughed. ‘Freedom to do what? People are weird. We have an entire galaxy of room to breed oddballs in. I believe that, and I’m trying to prevent it. You’re fighting for it and you refuse to admit it exists.’


‘What does that excuse?’ he asked her.

‘Maybe nothing, perhaps everything. Let me ask you this; if you had received the same orders- to infiltrate the other side by pretending to defect- what would you have done?’

‘I would have refused.’ M’Lanth declared, improbably.

‘What? With the fate of the galaxy at stake, and the evil Empire to be brought down by any means necessary?’ Franjia prodded him.

‘No, because I’d make a terrible undercover agent. I couldn’t betray my principles- couldn’t fake it convincingly.’


‘Now that, I can believe.’ She said. ‘In all seriousness- you behaved decently, with dedication and comradeship, and fate chose to boot you up the backside for it. Aron and I were simply the steel toecap of the day.

We did what we had to do, what we were sent to do, and being the instrument of it doesn’t stop me feeling sorry for your crappy luck.’ She said, worrying herself by how sincerely she actually meant it. Even if it was true, that didn’t make it officially acceptable. Time to start taking ruthless lessons again, she thought.

‘I’ll never forgive you for that.’ He said, words steeped in bitterness.

‘Didn’t really expect you to- do you know what happens to you next?’

‘What, you mean how much of an ever I’m likely to have?’ he said. ‘The disintegration booth.’

‘Not on this ship. We don’t do disintegrations.’

‘I had no idea you were so moral.’ He said.

‘Never mind morals, it’s the energy budget we’re worried about. You’re far more likely to get shot in the back of the head and dumped into the biocycler tanks. Unless…’ She wondered how to put it in a way that would get through to him.


‘No.’ he said, determined.

‘Listen, hear me out. Your rank and file are going to get prison terms, and they’re going to be horrible. They’re going to be worked and abused until they wish they were dead, but they’re going to survive to be released back into society- as an object lesson.

They’ll visibly have been made to suffer for supporting the Alliance, but they haven’t done anything individually notable other than that.

Noncom and petty officers, junior officers, longer terms that they may or may not make it out of. Senior officers and ideologues, not good. As a squadron leader, you’re borderline.’ She informed him, optimistically.

‘You support this system?’ he said, incredulous.

‘Aron and I didn’t have time to make up convincing false backgrounds, so a lot of what we told you was true enough. I was a police pilot, and if there was a time when I could have turned my back on the empire, it was when I was a young cop, just getting my mind around the law we were supposed to enforce.


As I put time in, and met more and more of the people we were enforcing it on, I started to see the logic behind it. Your theoretical position may be attractive, but it’s straight out of dreamland.

‘Most police are professional cynics; after a while you lose the ability to maintain that most of the people you meet are liars and idiots simply because your job brings you into contact with a disproportionate share of them, and start believing that all the people out there to meet are in fact liars and idiots.

I skipped out of the worst of it, went into search-and-rescue, but even I can’t think of more than four or five beings I would trust to live a life without the law watching them.

It may be harsh, even drastic, individuals may get caught and squashed in the machinery now and again, but I am still convinced it is the least worst option. Even if I had sufficient personal reason to turn on the Empire, I think I would still believe that as a general rule. And you don’t have to be one of the squashed if you don’t want to.’

‘Oh, no. I’m not falling for that. I want to live, but not at the price of pissing on everything I’ve lived for. Not at the price of turning on my friends and comrades. I will not betray the Alliance.’ He said, with fragile determination.

‘Barring utter fluke, you’re going to die. A fighting chance is one thing, but not like this.’ She said, trying to come up with something that he would actually listen to.


In his position- she might start out with false bravado, but then to think what it would be like, turning your back on so many of your own, becoming a pampered pet of your enemies and having seven thousand ghosts curse you every night- she looked at his eyes and realised she couldn’t do it either.

She tried anyway. ‘How will what you live for gain by your death? How would it serve the Alliance? How would letting the legal process destroy you serve the future?

Your cause is not a gang of failed ex-senators or vengeance-mad adrenaline monkeys, I believe you when you say that it is freedom- but how are you supposed to do that except by being free?’

‘Do I have to start quoting you to yourself? What you expect the Empire to do to us prisoners is not the way of a state that gives a flying kriff about freedom. And you know it.’


She glanced at the stormtroopers escorting him. ‘The Captain would really like an excuse not to have to kill you.’

‘What, the last undead twitches of conscience?’

‘He wouldn’t let his sense of morals get in the way of doing his duty. You are an active, declared enemy of the Empire, and unless that changes, you’re going to be dealt with like an enemy.’ She said.

‘Then that’s the way it’ll have to be.’ He said, defiant.

‘Take him away.’ She instructed the stormtroopers; they wheeled him and his drip back to the guarded section of the medical complex.

She went back to leafing through the datapad, enthusiasm temporarily sapped. It was harder to hate people and strive to kill them when you got to talk to them about it afterwards.



Obdurate’s captain was feeling relatively unoppressed for the first time in what seemed like months. He had a purely professional job to do, his watchers were off the bridge, and he could just get on with navy business, without worrying too much about what came after.

Black Prince’s nav team had given him a route plot, and they had ridden it out.

Now it was down to search procedure, a subject the confidential publications on changed with boggling speed. Exactly as fast as the Alliance came up with new tricks and the Empire invented counters to them, in fact.

They were in the approximate area. Their sublight sensors had nothing- the target had moved out of reach. It had done so under slow hyper, nothing radical enough to be noticed. Vastly increasing the area they had to search, the noise they would make doing so, and the chances the rebel had to slip away.

The tactical book counter was to choose the most likely direction and plot a series of short, spiralling loops around it, passing through a cone centred on the rebel’s most likely line of retreat. The operational counter was to call on the assistance of recon fighters.

Raesene didn’t want to call for help, he wanted to earn Lennart’s and his own crews’ respect by doing this himself; so he had the navigation team plan the spiral search, centred on a nearby system.

If the rebels were good, they would know they were being followed- if they were very good, they would know what by.

If Obdurate picked up a trace, the rebels would aim for crowded space, lure the Imperial ship into a maze- asteroid or cometary belt- where at the very least, they could get her to deploy her own fighters, and then takeoff, fight past a few and force her to either abandon her fighter screen or lose time picking them up.

That would work, if Obdurate wasn’t loaded with Bombers and Sentinels.

First, catch your rebel. Obdurate began her first search pattern, a wide sweeping series of curves.

‘Contact, Captain.’ One of his pit sensor crew called out, part-way through the fourth spiral.

‘Relative 220 minus 32.’ Low on the port quarter; at hyperdrive speed and distance, one whole degree was an immense sweep of space, only a little better than ‘over there a ways’, but good enough to give cues to zero in on.

‘Speed and course?’ Raesene demanded.

‘On course for…wait, non-match. The engine pattern doesn’t check out. False alarm.’


This, Raesene thought, is how messengers manage to get themselves shot. Sloppy, inadequate reporting to tense authority figures.

‘Next time, verify.’ He shouted at the com/scan tech.

‘Aye, Aye, Sir.’ The comtech snapped off a perfect formal salute and turned back to his board, hiding behind officialdom.

Think, man, think, Raesene told himself. Light freighter, the rebel’s a modified light freighter. Not exactly uncommon. Put the red hat on for a second. What’s he going to be trying to do? If he’s running, chances are he’s clear away already. He can pretend to be civilian traffic, and…he won’t be running away, will he?

‘Nav, abort search pattern. Take us two light years off Ghorn, quietest approach you can manage consistent with right now.’

‘Aye, aye, Sir.’


Obdurate made an unplanned re-entry; there was the inevitable minute of chaos while the navcomputer triangulated their position, Raesene hopping up and down for every second. Then she lunged back into hyperspace.

He tried not to pace the deck, far from sure he was right. Obdurate’s hyper-to-normal space sensor capability was short-ranged and fuzzy, hyper to hyper better; he waited, willing a signal to show.

Normal to hyper was the longest ranged. Obdurate emerged in shallow-interstellar space to sniff for the rebel; Raesene trying hard not to spook the sensor crew.

He didn’t want to scare them into not doing a proper job- might already be too late for that. The temptation to stare over their shoulders was nearly irresistible.

He noticed a glimmer. The sensor-tech whose board it had come up on was twitching, unsure- unwilling to report prematurely, and making a hash of the analysis and identification procedure.

‘Report.’ Raesene snapped at- her, actually. Fair hair cropped to two millimetres length and dark-beige skin, relatively new out of training and quite badly scared.

‘Light freighter class, identification in progress, Captain.’ She stammered.


‘Then proceed.’ He said to what was now a bundle of nerves. The shift chief and the watch officer both came over to the console, worked the contact- Raesene stopped trying not to, went over to the other side of the bridge to pace.

They were old hands, had it locked down and an identifiable harmonic extracted in five seconds. It took them several more than that to believe what it identified as.

‘Captain Raesene, you may want to verify this with your own eyes.’

The pattern was right. And? He didn’t see what was so special about a ship named the Sunfighter Franchise. At least, not until the sensor watch officer crossreferenced to known aliases.

‘Comtech, burst transmission, minimum bandwidth, to Black Prince; “Herding rebel in your direction. ID’s as one of the known aliases of current Number Two Most Wanted. Request anvil.”


On Black Prince’s bridge, Lennart had been watching the search in progress. The message made him pause.

‘Ah, now this is interesting. Shandon? Is it possible that Lieutenant-Commander Raesene is suffering from wishful thinking, or that there’s actually something to this? Verify.

Oh, and, fighter bay-’ the com techs knowing to route his words to the zone of the ship addressed- ‘ready Beta and Gamma for launch. Brenn, come in on this.’


‘I predict he’s going for the light cone.’ Brenn said. Meaning that the rebel would emerge in the outer edge of the kuiper belt, say sixteen light hours out- and so seeing what happened sixteen hours ago.

‘He’ll lurk and let it wash over him, hide in the ice. Let us spread out, and then fade away or do a speed run through the search line.’

‘Plausible.’ Lennart agreed. ‘Which he do you think we’re looking for?’

‘No absolute-confidence solution.’ Rythanor reported. ‘They’re running a low-level emitting mask, enough to change their engine pattern without adding enough to it to screw up a recon run. Whoever they are, they’re good enough to be a worthwhile target.’


‘Alternatively, they could be a perfectly ordinary combat-scout, using the fake ID of a famous rebel to get us scrambling around like headless chickens making all sorts of radiation they can monitor.’ Lennart stated.

‘Let’s see what the group can do. Order “Colonel Pranger” here,’ bringing up a map of the system and using a laser pointer, ‘”Spiral Eyes Joe” here, “Helga the Horrible” here, I was right, we do need tactical numbers, “The Iron Turnip” there.’

Com-Scan coded the orders up and transmitted them; two Bayonet and two Marauder corvettes started to move, building a vector and plotting short hyperspace hops to cover an arc of the cometary belt.

In the extremely unlikely event of their needing that much backup, Perseverance was alerted to be ready to support them.


Speaker ping, followed by a voice Lennart rather wanted not to have to deal with right now.

Adannan. ‘Captain Lennart, I cannot help noticing that several ships of the group are starting to move out. What are they doing?’

The throne room had repeaters for the bridge systems installed. The work crew should have known better than to reactivate them- or possibly he was simply looking out the window.

Lennart wanted to tell him it was none of his business. Finding a line of argument worth defending would be the hard part. That and really, could he get away with not reporting this?

‘Lord Adannan, we have a rebel recon boat playing hide and seek in the cometary halo. Normally we wouldn’t bother you about this, but it’s engine emissions come close to matching the signature of a very well known rebel. I can’t think of a good reason not to maneuver to intercept, can you?’ Which was sailing a shade close to the wind.

‘Which very well known rebel? Dodonna, Antilles? Willard, Tallon, Hudsol?’ Adannan asked. His hackles were rising, there was something very strange and very important about that unseen ship. Something fearful.

‘Solo.’ Lennart said, smiling.


‘The man and his carpet who-‘ Sharply, Adannan’s fears crystallised. If they destroyed that ship- all might be well, but the probability was low. If they managed to capture her, and there was a distinct possibility, then the heavens would fall on him.

He heard Lennart order out three more ships of the squadron to positions on the outer edge of the main cometary halo- Darxani, strike cruiser, Henchman and Jointure, Servator- class heavy corvettes.

All carried ion cannon, and the plan was for the four lighter ships and the looming Perseverance to force the rebel out, pushing her into breaking for open space- where the ion cannon armed ships would be waiting.

Black Prince’s navigation team were ordered to run continuously updated menus of short-jump courses for them, so they could instantly hyperspace on to the fleeing Falcon’s tail.


‘If you succeed-‘ Adannan began. His voice was trembling, and he could not, must not show weakness. A live Han Solo would attract attention. It had a terrifying near-certainty of attracting it from the being he was trying second- hardest in all the galaxy to avoid. Vader.

Mostly, Lennart was looking forward to the professional challenge, another part was studying Adannan and wondering what in space was wrong. What about that little ship could scare a dark jedi that badly?

The correct answer was, of course, how it could involve him with another and vastly more powerful dark jedi. Lennart didn’t connect that, his mind was too full of vectors and sensor radii. He did question, though.

‘Kor Alric? Is there something you ought to be telling me?’

‘Is this not- excessive? Eight ships to take one?’ Adannan stalled. ‘Doesn’t that do him too much honour?’

‘He’s notorious for not caring about the odds, so I don’t think he’ll mind. He’s a credit to the old home turf, in fact- and we’re only one degree of separation removed.

When I was at Raithal I trained two of the men who went on to instruct him at Carida. I was looking forward to meeting him, myself.’ Lennart said, concentrating mainly on the moving ships.

‘We are in a security situation here, Captain Lennart. We cannot afford the galactic interest that this will bring. Let him pass by.’


‘What? Excuse me, Kor Alric, but- he knows we’re pursuing him. The hunt has already begun. Pulling the squadron back now would ring alarm bells in any competent spaceman’s mind.

The rebels will wonder why we let him get away, the sector group aren’t in top form at the moment but they still might manage to notice- and region would throw a fit.’ Lennart said, hinting that if the regional support group didn’t find out anyway, he might tell them. What was Adannan on about?

‘This man is famous throughout the galaxy- taking or destroying him would cause the entire galaxy to take an interest in me.’ Adannan said, egotistically.


How are you going to do that yourself, float out after him with a jetpack and a lightsabre? Lennart thought, hopefully loud enough- this time- for Adannan to hear.

‘Is there no-one on your personal staff who understands starships- well enough to interpret, at least? Who can advise you on what is and isn’t possible, your personal pilot perhaps?’ Lennart prodded Adannan, mind still on the chase, looking for the flicker in Black Prince’s sensor picture that would betray direct contact.

They had picked it up initially at very long range, so why then and not now? Making noise- more than it needed to, to get their attention?

It had worked, after all- managed to pull an inside run on their response unit, and caused an elaborate and expensive trap to be set up. Rythanor had been cautious, unwilling to commit, and for a reason. Whoever it was, they were good at fakery.


The Death Star Incident had broken clean through the normal news control procedures; the sheer enormity of the shock of it had paralysed the security organs long enough for all kinds of video and sensor-telemetry to leak out.

After that, any attempt at a cover story had been shutting the stable door after the tauntaun had bolted.
Which raised three thoughts. One of them, that the target had managed to draw a massive first response from the Imperial squadron.

Second, that stealth was something their probable-but-not-certain opponent did not have in his blood. Solo had been forced to learn it, but it wasn’t his first tactic. First deception and con-artistry, the more flamboyant the better and hiding in plain sight if at all possible, second relying on speed and power like the pirate-gunman he was, last and least slithering about the shadows.


Third, that the whole sorry mess, from Alderaan to Yavin, had been a spectacular blip in an otherwise solid record. The Imperial censors were usually better at information control than that.

They could certainly keep something like this under wraps from enemies and public, until long after it was too late for anyone else to react to. So whose attention was Adannan so afraid of? Was it the censors themselves?

That would stand further, quieter, thought.


In the meantime- no signature in hyperspace led to the obvious conclusion that he wasn’t there. Was it possible that something that small and fast could have run in close without giving itself away?

‘Brenn, plot this.’ He expanded the system map out to the surrounding space, and drew a trajectory in hyperdrive on it. A curling, helical approach.

‘Work out what we would see if the target came in on that path. Com, contact Obdurate, tell her to jump to- here.’ Zooming back in, and picking a point in the cometary halo not quite opposite to the main search group.

‘Do you really think he’s that good?’ Brenn said, already bent over a holographic plotting table.

‘He’s Correllian. Of course he is.’ Lennart said, only half joking. ‘How does it look?’

‘Something that small, and able to make that-‘ glowing numbers in the air illustrated his assumptions- ‘much speed on that little of it’s power, we’d spot her in post-battle analysis, not at the time.’


‘I presume you have kept enough processing power spare to plot intercept courses for us?’ Lennart asked.

‘Only a few dozen.’

‘Captain. Am I to understand,’ Adannan’s voice again, ‘that you are attempting to engage and capture this rebel, in violation of my direct orders?’ Still fear, now anger also- partly anger at being made to be afraid.

‘Not trying to catch him would look suspicious also. Best security solution, we nearly catch him. Shoot him up a bit, force him to break and run. That and that alone should look realistic enough to satisfy all parties. Apart from those who really want him caught or killed.’

‘I am an agent of the privy council, and you will do as you have been ordered.’ Adannan bellowed.

‘Did I say that I wouldn’t? Give me room to do it properly.’ Lennart broke the connection.


‘We need a liaison officer.’ He said to the command team. ‘Someone to stop us snarling at each other.’ The entire bridge team huddled into their seats and tried not to look at him.

He hadn’t really expected them to be daft enough to volunteer- but that left him with the burden of selecting who got to be thrown to the wolves. Later.

‘Kick out Beta and Gamma squadrons- to drop points evenly spaced here for Beta, here for Gamma,’ laser-pointing on the inner edge of the halo, two long arcs.

‘Instruct them to converge on a point here.’ Marking on the outer edge of the main halo where the rebel was now expected to be. ‘Flush the rebel towards Obdurate’s drop point here.’


Aron was still getting used to the idea of flying a Hunter; using it to chase one of the most famous pilots in the galaxy was not what he had expected for a first run. He had also seen Gamma deliver mediocre results too often for comfort. A widely spaced sweep line suited him just fine.

Smenge, he had forgotten just how irritating the TIE whine could be. Systems check, all green, initial course away from the hangar bay, listen to the nav unit bleep annoyingly as it drank in the course from the destroyer’s nav computers- then the blue-white blur again.

Emergence, nerves jangling, just in case there was a lump of ice in front of him; no- although Gamma Eleven did break hard to avoid a large iceteroid- which turned out to be half a million kilometres distant. Somebody’s sensor suite’s not working properly, Aron thought.

Gamma did have a higher casualty, higher pilot turnover rate than Epsilon. They were greener, and they would need to be trained harder to get up to a decent standard.

They were operating under distant control, spread apart; no close formation work. Under these circumstances, his job as leader boiled down to knowing when to throw the central directions away and just react.


It only took a few minutes for him to have something to react to. There were the big objects, stable in their orbits, but there were also a few which had been destabilised, probably by the passage of a starship, into colliding and splintering.

The relatively weak long-range scan on the Hunter registered four clouds of dirty-snowball fragments that would be worth taking a very close look at.

One of them was close enough to his flight plan that he could get away with diverting for a more detailed scan. He edged over in that direction, two and three were nearby, they all started active scanning into the cloud- ‘Lead, Three. Faint contact.’

First the handoff, then direct detection came up on Aron’s sensor globe. ‘I see it too. Converge and pursue.’

The image was reflecting off dozens of separate splinters, imperfect mirrors that they were it was impossible to get a firm ID.

Aron switched to active ultra-short wave, scanning in a band they barely reflected and didn’t re- reflect, and flew on that, refusing to let the icy maze confuse him; ordered the squadron to do the same. He lost the contact briefly, but Two hadn’t.


‘I see it! YT! Engaging!’ Just a shade overexcited, then.

The laserfire made a good steering cue. Flashes of green, a long sustained stream of red, three white flares of bolt meeting shield, and then a scream- ‘Ejecting!’

If he survives, I’m going to amputate his exclamation marks, Aron thought, curving round one splinter- then breaking radically up and left as a speeding, battered-looking ship nearly impaled him.

He managed to recover before he sideslipped into the ice, and took a couple of shots at the fleeing transport as it dipped and weaved through the light and splinters.

In space this crowded, better him than me, Aron thought. He could accelerate up to match its speed, but it had the shields and armour to ride out hits from the smaller shards that he didn’t- he had to take much bigger risks to catch it than it did to run away. Kriff, he thought, I’m going to have to. Got to set an example.


In short wave, reflections were no longer a problem, he could distinguish one lump of ice from another, but that only meant he could spot blind alleys when he saw them.

‘Work your way through. Save the speed for open space. Follow it and herd it, don’t get yourselves killed pushing in for a close strafe.’

Some of his charges were more dextrous than others; the target seemed to be heading for one of the largest halo objects within reach- if it was any closer to the star it would class as a moon. Run up to hyperspeed in it’s shadow, Aron thought, that’s what I would do.

Only himself and Nine arrived in time to see it happen.


They emerged at the edge of the object’s wake in time to see it pause and slow to a relative crawl. The big objects, the ones that would drop a YT out of hyperspace, were far enough apart that he could get a clear run- there were too many small ones that could stop a Hunter for them to follow him. Here and now it is then, Aron thought.

Then things took a sudden turn for the better and he didn’t have to die after all. The thousand-kilometre halo object suddenly lit up from within with green light as somebody started turbolasing their way through it from the other side. Obdurate.

The ice moon cracked and shattered- Aron ducked back behind a two kilometre chunk to use as cover- and the rebel freighter bolted forward, making distance as a hail of LTL fire punched through the fragments and reached out after it.

It kicked and tumbled as bolts found it, the Demolisher slower than the rebel but chasing after it to keep it within gun range as long as possible. The YT was in flat-out flee mode.

Aron, and the Hunters starting to come up behind him, had to pick their way through the expanding shell of moon fragments- they wouldn’t get close enough in time to get their own shots in.


Obdurate stayed on the rebel’s tail, harrying it and trying to catch it in a cone of fire as it weaved and twisted out of the way, heading for the next worthwhile piece of cover.

The YT hurdled it, breaking line of sight long enough to get a few moments of straight course, pointed at the clearest patch of space, initiated.

Obviously not the Millennium Falcon after all, Aron thought, the hyperdrive actually worked first time. Now he had to round up his squadron, call in search and rescue for the ejected, and go back and work on them until he was confident having them on his wing.

‘Well, I think that should be fairly convincing.’ Lennart said to his bridge crew. ‘Transmit orders, the rest of the search group to return to holding positions, Obdurate to retrieve Beta and Gamma squadrons then rejoin.

I’ll have a word with Obdurate Actual myself later about fighters, cosmic debris and friendly fire. That and remind me to thank Captain Solo, if we ever do meet.’

‘What for, exactly?’ Rythanor asked.

‘For providing the first real evidence we have that Adannan is playing his own game instead of the Empire’s.’