Hull no. 721- a fanfic

[LadyTevar]

A great chapter, hon.. but a bit disjointed with who's talking when. They paragraphs are broken up weirdly.

[declan]

cool chapter , ya had me jonesing there for a bit.

I wanna see more of the heavy gun bunnies in action tho soon, lol.

Declan

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Lady Tevar, I was rushing to get that finished and up, and probably did skip a bit of proofreading in the process. I'm too close to the trees to see the wood- when I re-read this, I can see the scene in my head so I have no problem knowing who's talking to whom. Evidently I didn't bring it out as well as I thought I had, so if you could point out to me where the problem is, so I can fix it?

Declan, I'm pretty sure referring to His Imperial Majesty's starships as 'gun bunnies' is some kind of offence. Then again, with the length of the defaulter's list around here, who's worried?

[LadyTevar]

It's more the formatting, I think. Some of the conversations have been set off by a return-break, others haven't.
For example:

Two problems, one solution. Synergy in action.
‘Right, an engineering detail will stay with Tarazed Meridian, the rest of the crew, transfer to Dynamic who will do the boarding action. Platoon BD32 and team 06 Blue to ‘The Silent Bugler’, go after Vice-Admiral Gerlen. I-‘ yawn- ‘find Nygma, fast. Oh, and signal for assistance to 851, we are definitely going to need some backup on this. And did the Chief remember-‘
‘Tankers are on their way, Skipper.’ Brenn confirmed. ‘Duracrete, too.’

See? All grouped together, but the scene is broken up into several little groupings like this, so it's hard (for me) to follow.

[declan]

Declan, I'm pretty sure referring to His Imperial Majesty's starships as 'gun bunnies' is some kind of offence. Then again, with the length of the defaulter's list around here, who's worried?

Not the actual ships , I meant the heavy turbo lazer crew that seems to bring firepower to bear on any problem , awesome mindset

Great work , eleven

Declan

[Vehrec]

Towards the end there is a really freaking long soliloquy. Nothing breaks it up, it's just a monologue that seems to go on for three solid paragraphs. That was another thing in addition to what Tevar noted that made me feel like it could have used polishing.

Declan, aren't Gun Bunnies Girls normally? Those guys are just gigaton happy maniacs.

[declan]

Declan, aren't Gun Bunnies Girls normally? Those guys are just gigaton happy maniacs

This is me talking ignorant and what not,but at trade shows girls are always the bunnies , no matter if its ski or guns, or booth babes or what not.

But usually when I hear chat about artillery, usually Ive either heard them called cannon cockers or gun bunnies , they probably have other names too

Declan

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Say their name, and they appear...well, one of them anyway. I'd expected this to take a lot longer than it actually did, but it just sort of flowed out. I'll do the edit sometime this evening, but for now this is the first scene of what will be 32b, actually ahead of schedule.


Six customs corvettes and two larger ships, the increasingly heavily worked Provornyy and her sister Grey Princess, departed Ghorn II in one direction, the light destroyer Dynamic in another.

On board the light destroyer, all was in ferment. Dordd was trying not to let his own instincts get the better of him to the detriment of the service as a whole, by lumbering Falldess with more of his idiots than she could cope with.

So far, he wasn’t doing too well.

He had just about reached the stage of considering that, well, familiarity probably had bred contempt, and a change of environment would do them good, sharpen them up, that his slime might start behaving more like sailors if they got a fresh start, and she could cope with the contents of Detention Block 17A, when there was a signal at the door.


‘Enter.’ He said.

It was Lieutenant Pellor Aldrem. Lieutenant “You know, I never knew how much fun being a petty tyrant can be until now” Aldrem.

Lieutenant “That was pathetic. You call that an attempt to frag your commanding officer? This is how you’re supposed to do it” Aldrem. The man who had landed on his gunnery department like a brick being heaved through a window.

‘I know now that I made a major mistake recommending Mirhak-Ghulej to succeed me as exec of Black Prince, but I never expected Captain Lennart to use you to punish me for it.’ Dordd said, more bitterly than he had intended.

‘No, Sir, he didn’t, that was all our own work.’ Aldrem decided he could get away with saying. That was the worst part of being an officer- taking responsibility. Admitting to what you had done was never a good general principle.


‘Really?’ Dordd said, standing up. He looked a bit like a praying mantis, Aldrem thought. ‘Are you telling me that drugging Lieutenant Gavrillom, dressing him in a mynock costume, and gluing him to the bridge viewscreens was your idea?’

‘I have no idea who actually perpetrated that, Sir.’ Aldrem said, more carefully now. Dordd seemed in too black a mood for humour to reach him. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.

‘Dewback-shit. I’m still trying to work out where you got a costume big enough to fit over a spacesuit, though.’

Aldrem refused to fall for it this time. ‘Looked cobbled together to me, Sir. Clever, though.’


‘And at least slightly more humorous than three charges of assault, one of attempted murder, fifteen disobeying an order, six striking a superior officer, eighty disrespect, a hundred and seventeen charges of conduct unbecoming, and one rape.’ Dordd said coldly.

‘Damn. Lost the bet.’ Aldrem grumbled.

‘You had a bet, on the subject of onboard discipline? With whom?’ Dordd said, somewhere between shock and rage.

‘With the dorsal- mid divisional officer, whether I could find more charges to bring against his people than he could against mine.’ Aldrem said, mock- casually.

‘Not that it was ever really official or anything, but they were winning because I couldn’t find any way to make incompetence count as an offence.’

‘ “Failure to carry out your duties”, section 7 chapter 4 para 23 clause 5.’ Dordd pointed out.

‘Ah. Hadn’t picked up on that. Good, that puts us ahead again, by twenty-six field punishments.’ Aldrem said.


‘I do not believe,’ Dordd tried to get his spinning head under control, ‘that even you would be capable of being so ridiculously casual about the good order of the Starfleet. Have you any explanation to offer?’

‘Yes, Captain Dordd, I do.’ The ex Senior Chief Petty Officer said, changing tone himself, becoming cold and official. ‘Assume I had the sense to realise this was going to be a clusterkriff- what would you expect me to set up?’

‘Make such a farce and a mockery out of the process,’ Dordd realised, ‘that the whole sorry mess would have to go all the way up to a full court of inquiry to get untangled.’

‘Capital charges involving an officer, so that should reach squadron command level.’ Aldrem confirmed. ‘It’s not that we don’t trust you, but some of your people really need their heads banged together, and this seemed a good way to arrange it. I don’t think Captain Lennart realises how bad things really are.’


‘What about the actual charges? I can’t let you run riot like this and get a hold of my own crew.’ Dordd said.

‘Most of that won’t stand up, it was just us being ourselves, Sir- but I want the rape brought to trial, because we can blow that one away, the charge is utter crap. It was consensual and the incident report was filed by her jealous room-mate.’

‘And the attempted murder?’ Dordd asked.

‘Wouldn’t have been attempted until I actually did it. Watching the way that moron ran his turret, watching him mishandle his gun pointers, I told your man I’d spreadeagle him over the centre gun barrel if he screwed up that badly again, and it wasn’t a threat, it was a promise.

I kicked him out before he could screw the pittin badly enough to force me to make good on it.’ Aldrem said, anger evident. ‘Seriously, sir, if he comes from a culture that still allows duelling, I’d happily sort it that way.’ He added.

‘Junior Lieutenant Nantengan won’t be fit for a while. When you kicked him out, did you forget about the access shaft?’

‘Slipped my mind in the heat of the moment, Sir.’ Aldrem lied.


‘Indeed. I don’t suppose you know anything about the fire?’ Dordd asked.

‘Well, Sir, where there’s living there’s crime, as my grandfather the Detective Superintendent always used to say. You know Dynamic has more than her fair share of it, though. Too many spiceheads, and not in a good way.’

‘Your grandfather was a fairly senior cop. No doubt you started learning your disrespect for the law at an early age.’ Dordd commented.

‘He did a stint in Internal Affairs, sir. He also said, when there’s a lot of crime, the police are underfunded; when there’s too much, the police are lazy; when there’s far too much, they’re complicit.’ Aldrem said.

‘Exactly the sort of logic I would expect from the maniac who disabled the suppression system, glued a chemical detector tuned for burning spice on the wall, and threw an incendiary grenade into one of the Regulatory Branch store complexes.’ Dordd said.

‘In that case, Captain, you should be happy. Someone else on this boat must have reasoning skills.’ Aldrem deadpanned. ‘Besides which, the detector came up with half a dozen different positives. Or so I heard.’


‘It did. The internal security system also showed a senior rate attempting to destroy the detector in order to hide the evidence. I hate ordering executions.’ Dordd said, grimly.

‘Every one is a failure to reach them, on my part. The other side of authority; anything that goes wrong in your department is your fault. So what the kriff did I do wrong with you?’

‘Sir, can I speak freely?’ Aldrem said.

‘You mean you haven’t already? Go ahead.’


‘You got this job because this crew are shit. Personnel Directorate thought that anyone who could keep a crew in order with the skipper in charge and Commander Mirannon as resident bad example had to be shit hot, so you got the job of beating them into order.

Then fortune played the sick joke on you of needing them to be ready in as many days as you wanted months. It’s a drastic situation, so you need to be drastic. The only way you’re going to get them into shape in time is to chop bits off.

I could name three, four hundred people that you would be better off spacing, because otherwise those kriffwits are going to be in a position to take the rest of us down with them.’


‘Very harsh. Promotion to the officer class has changed you.’ Dordd said. ‘Let me see your list.’

Aldrem handed over a datacard. Captain Dordd plugged it in, compared it with the list of names on his own shit-list and the list of names he had intended to transfer to Falldess’ command.

A high degree of overlap. ‘Are you really this comfortable condemning men? Writing them off to be fried?’ he asked, as if he had to.

‘Sir, the Imperial Starfleet gave me eight thirty-two teraton turbolasers to play with. You bet I’m comfortable with frying people.’ Aldrem pointed out. ‘Further down, second set of files; positive recommendations.’


‘Junior Lieutenant Banks as C turret commander? Isn’t she the one Leading Spaceman Suluur’s accused of raping?’ Dordd asked.

‘Yes. Ahdria Banks is an airhead space cadet with no sense of reality, no surprise when you think she’s been here for a while and still has some enthusiasm left, but she’s got some intelligence and she’s willing to learn.

She won’t be comfortable shooting at living targets, but for this coming fight she’s actually the best technical gunner you’ve got.’ Aldrem stated.

‘How did she and Suluur get together?’ Dordd wondered.

‘After- training jam sessions. He plays the rombophone, she’s a haultclerist. Her bunkie doesn’t think she could find her ass with both hands, so there’s no way she could get a man unless he forced himself on her.

Sir, bring that one to trial, because otherwise the Imperial Medical Association are likely to bring my team up for unlicensed neurosurgery on the room-mate.’

‘Since when did I make you my executive officer?’ Dordd asked, not meaning it seriously.

‘Funny you should ask that, Captain.’ Aldrem went only that far, at first.


It was, Dordd thought, glaringly obvious. Probably not true, though. ‘In theory, Commander Ridatt carries a large share of responsibility for the situation.

In practise, he’s one of the few who actually still thinks enough about his career that I can inspire any kind of actual performance out of him. I need him too badly to prosecute, but for Force’s sake don’t tell him that.’

‘Sir, if he’s trying to do his job properly then there are a smenge of a lot of people under him who aren’t.’ Aldrem said, and decided not to go further. ‘You must have realised you were due for your own command?’


‘What?’ Dordd said, briefly puzzled by the change of direction. ‘Oh, I suppose I was. No guarantees, though. Enlisted personnel get promoted by officers, officers get promoted by shoreside chair polishers. I suppose your next question is going to be well, what the kriff did I expect, wine and roses?’

‘No, actually, Sir. It was going to be- what do you want, and why are you letting this shower stop you from getting it? There’s a time to let us stand back and do our own thing, a time to lead the way and let us follow, a time to stand at the back, point and shove, and a time to apply the boot up the arse.

Captain Lennart’s a pretty easy- going boss, now, because he’s got the ship and the crew he wants. There aren’t many of the long service crew he needs to throw the book at any more, and a lot of the time it was me and the team anyway.

Look, you joined Black Prince to replace Commander Torvelson, just after we’d made our biggest score. We were a pretty strange bunch, space crazy to a man, and you thought you had to sort us out.

You came in looking to leave your mark, apply footprints, and unless I miss my guess the skipper had you on the carpet a few times, didn’t he?’ Aldrem asked.


‘It wasn’t the carpet, it was the duraplast sheeting I was really scared of.’ Dordd said. ‘He did that once, for the fear, to remind me what it felt like to be on the receiving end of absolute authority.’

‘But not recently.’ Aldrem stated.

‘Actually, he always rode fairly hard on the regulatory and disciplinary branches. Gunnery, he would forgive you almost anything up to a negligent discharge.’

‘Is that what it looked like from the outside?’ Aldrem said, amused. ‘He kept a pretty close eye on us, but did most of it himself- as if we were a musical instrument he didn’t trust anyone else, even his exec, to look after.

Never mind. The actual point is that most of the brutal part, the hammering into shape, had already got done in the first two years, and he could be a vicious bastard about it. At the start of his time on Black Prince he was ruthless, kicking out the people he didn’t think were going to cut it.

Time for you to do the same here, Sir.’


‘Did you used to think this way before you got made up to officer status?’ Dordd wondered.

‘Sir, I’m one of the top hundred turret gunners, maybe one of the top four, in the entire void-damned Starfleet. You think I got to be this good by being stupid?

You think anyone gets to be that good without being an elitist and a perfectionist? Difference is, I always tried not to let it eat me up. Not let that take me over to a point where I forgot why I wanted to do it in the first place.

Also, I was never responsible for anybody’s competence but my own and my team’s before. Now that I am, it’s-‘ he shook his head. ‘I’m turning into much more of a bastard than I thought I was.’ He pointed at the datapad.


‘What was it you actually came here for?’ Dordd asked him.

‘The team, the plan is for us to go back to Black Prince to take over the new heavy axial battery. We all decided to volunteer to remain here instead, for the duration of the battle.

Eddaru and Gendrik can take turrets A and B, I’ll do battery command. If you think you can put up with us, Sir.’ Aldrem said.

‘What, and endorse your brand of vigilante justice?’ Dordd asked, absurdly pleased despite himself. ‘You really think that little of the gun teams?’

‘We’ve identified those who do have some talent, and managed to bring it on- a bit. They’re better than they were, but not good enough to throw into a cauldron like this is going to be.’ Aldrem stated.


Dordd was still thinking about it when there was another beeping at the door. ‘That’ll be Commander Falldess come to object to the first cut of the people I plan to transfer to her.’ Dordd decided, thinking out loud. ‘Enter.’

The door opened, and it was indeed Comander Falldess, brandishing a sheaf of hardcopy and looking as if she had half a mind to assault Dordd with it; the beeping kept going, and Aldrem realised it was his comlink.

‘Ah, dreck, I set up an automatic alarm, that’s the boobytraps going off.’ Aldrem said. ‘If you’ll excuse me, Sir, Ma’am-‘ and he ducked out the door, heading for the main turret complex, blaster drawn.

‘What in Sheol was that all about?’ Falldess asked, to Dordd.

‘More fodder for the court of inquiry.’ Dordd sighed. ‘I can guess why you’re here. Shall I save time by showing you the records of some of the people I didn’t transfer to you?’ he said, and handed her Aldrem’s datapad.

[declan]

Say their name, and they appear...well, one of them anyway. I'd expected this to take a lot longer than it actually did, but it just sort of flowed out. I'll do the edit sometime this evening, but for now this is the first scene of what will be 32b, actually ahead of schedule.

Nice end to a beautiful weekend, its a wonder with guys like that , that the rebels actually won.

Declan

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

The short answer to that one is, as attributed to Korner, "All skill is in vain when an angel pees in the touch-hole of your musket." Dumb luck and the Force played their part.

That and, awkward though it is to admit it, His Imperial Majesty and the command structure he imposed. The Starfleet is not short of talent; what it is short of is the freedom from political interference it really needed to give that talent room to function.

For a historical model, look at the French navy under Napoleon, or the Royal Navy from James VII and II to, say, around 1745; this is a period replete in cock-ups, not exactly redolent of the tradition of victory, and I have to wonder whether or not there's a parallel.

The Imperial Starfleet is not, and probably never can be under Palpatine, sufficiently independent of the Imperial state to protect it's people against interference and favouritism. I did say earlier that it can hold it's own against most of the organs of the Imperial state- with reference to Security- but not against the central authority and those whom it chooses to favour.

Civilian control is not the problem; civilian micromanagement is the problem. Regional forces, being much less involved in local politics, are more insulated from this, but at the strategic level they become galactic- class political footballs. The Death Star was even the right shape for it, too.

Anyway, this is a single scene update, again. One more in 32, collecting Hialaya Karu, and then, well, set piece mayhem.



Subsector Command Base was a shambles; it looked as if it been designed for grandeur, but gone so far over budget they hadn’t had a chance to add all the fancy bits.

The largest ship on station, when the detachment got there, was a Carrack; no match for a pair of Fulgurs, in and of itself, but the fixed defences- they would be a different story. So, limited shooting. Hopefully.

The bridge module of the customs corvette was small, not much bigger than a shuttle’s. Helm control was more like a fighter, in fact- yoke rather than vector panels, throttle rather than power grid. Then flight engineer, two gunnery control stations, in Y-shape behind the pilot.

Row of three consoles on the port of the aft end of the module, electronics; one conventional scan, one defensive, one customs analytic scanners and comms.

Command chair in the middle, slightly raised, and to starboard a two seat holopanel bay for observers or senior agents along for the ride.


Rontaine preferred to con her ship from the observer’s bay, more and better organised information flow, but it was full of cyborg. Space Major Overgaard was in there, apparently playing with one of the monitors; she had to ask.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Testing the limits of my perception.’ Overgaard said, in a reasonable facsimile of his own voice.

He had been sealed into life- support armour, that was tied in to a set of replacement parts. The rebels had thrown him into a disintegrator booth set on ‘slow burn’, and he had.

It was all surface damage, but it was most of his surface that had been damaged. Eyes, ears and throat gone, skin totally, a lot of flesh and muscle, only really core organs and skeleton left.

By weight, he had actually been about sixty percent of a man, but it was discount day in medlab and they had decided to rebuild him anyway. Reinforced skeleton, cybermuscles, new sense organs, exoskeleton.

‘Don’t damage the monitor.’ Rontaine said, in a break-it-and-you-bought-it tone.


‘Can it do infra-red?’ the cyborg asked. ‘I want it to show one pixel at a time, very nearly black, faintly coloured- to explore the limits of my discrimination. Can it do that?’

‘It can give me a better tactical picture, which I need and you don’t. Move.’ She snapped at him.
Overgaard shuffled over, to leave one of the seats free.

‘I am in charge of this part of the operation, and I expect to be obeyed.’ Rontaine said, in cut-glass, received pronunciation tones.

‘Expect away, we’re theoretically equal in rank.’ Overgaard said.

‘That pilot was right, we need decimal points.’ Rontaine grumbled. ‘What’s your seniority, your time in service?’

‘In a service technically superior to the customs, that would be? In any case, I think Commander Sarlatt of the Starfleet might have an opinion on the subject.’

‘What are you doing here, anyway? You’re only just out of surgery.’ She asked.

‘I think they’re trying to make me feel useful.’ Overgaard stated, and flipped a switch on the console bringing up the scan picture. Approaching deorbit and insertion point.


The plan was that the two Fulgur and three of the corvettes would remain in orbit, three of the corvettes would descend to the base, but only Rontaine’s would actually land, the other two remain in close support.

The scout team and the boarding platoon from Black Prince, backed by the customs boarding team, would go in and do the arrest/abduction, using the security ID’s and personnel who looked vaguely appropriate.

It was actually pretty much a classic Rebel type plan, relying on bluff and the sound of authority, misdirection and improvisation.

Charge Chief Derajivik was paying the part of the older agent, with junior lieutenant- ‘apprentice’- Kittrich the brash young ISB officer. He had been told that he was being watched for this one, and to treat the older enlisted man with respect. Or at least fake it convincingly.

Storm in, bang on tables, shout at them, cow them with your fervour and zeal for the New Order, and generally behave like complete gits, was the instruction they had been given.


It was supposed to be two standard garrison base towers linked together, and at the core it was; but someone had been ambitious, and someone else, lots of someones probably in the ferrocrete and duraplast industries, had profited by that.

The surrounding facilities had been developed outwards into an overgrown grey abscess. It was so clearly intended as a Major Fleet Base (™) that it actually achieved self- parody.

Docking slips and barracks, maintenance sheds and workshops, hardstandings for small craft, slideways for repulsorless emergency landings, and the passenger and freight magways to serve it all.

Then the defence installations, superhardened blister housings for theatre shields with valves for emitter antennae, closed, empty sockets for planetary ion cannon, shock pads for superheavy turbolasers, long rows and scattered clusters of conventional light and medium turbolasers- most of them empty, and so were the bays.

Some of them had servicing and support machinery, but for the most part, bare ferrocrete and duracrete. A grey-brown blot on the planet, horizon to horizon of nothing interesting to see.


‘Where do you intend to set down?’ Overgaard asked.

‘The key words for this operation were brash and bold, were they not? We have the same rough- field capability as the smugglers and pirates we chase, or better, so I was thinking, on that path in front of the main entrance to the staff tower.’ Rontaine said.

‘Avoiding the main docks entirely?’ Derajivik said. ‘Just what the ISB would do.’

The obvious comment about woman drivers- two hundred square kilometres of landing field and you still end up on the pavement- occurred to Overgaard, but he had already come far too close to death to think it worth saying.

‘Approach Control, this is CN27AJ19, the Silent Bugler, calling for landing clearance.’ Rontaine said, in a tone that was not at all a request.

The flight controller tried to stall. ‘Silent Bugler, this is a military facility, you do not have access.’

‘Approach Control, can you read? Reconfirm our beacon, this is Security business.’


There was a long pause. ‘Take her down.’ Rontaine ordered, and the three customs ships nosed down into the atmosphere, direct powered re-entries spiralling in on the base; the Carrack guard-ship moved to intercept, but had weapons locked onto it by both Fulgur.

The wide V of customs corvettes powered their way in, leaving scorching ion trails and cones of seared air behind them, shields glittering under the strain of pounding through the atmosphere.

‘Customs Corvette, you do not have approach authorisation.’ Ground control screamed at them.

‘Which is your fault for being too slow to acknowledge it.’ Rontaine snapped at him. ‘Is there someone else there who can take over for you, considering that you’re now under arrest?’ she added, instructing helm to aim fore the flowerbed just outside the command centre.


There was a short pause, then ‘This is Lieutenant Aryat, duty watch officer. Have you just tried to arrest one of my controllers over the com unit?’

‘I have just informed your man that he is impeding an Imperial Security Bureau investigation, which we have been assigned to assist. He has been told to consider himself under arrest, and we will be by to collect him- subsequent to the main purpose.

Would you like to join him?’ Rontaine said, pivoting the Silent Bugler on repulsors so they came in stern first.


‘Eris, is that you?’ the duty controller asked.

She had no idea who he was. Aryat? Same time at the academy? Where had he been in the class rankings? ‘I don’t remember you.’

‘I was number 1,371.’ Aryat admitted.

‘Small wonder I don’t remember.’ Rontaine said, cuttingly. ‘Are you seriously intending to get in my way?’

‘This is legitimate? Not just some demented stunt?’ he asked.

‘Considering the amount of trouble I’d just have landed myself in otherwise? Of course it’s legitimate.’ She said, contempt evident.

‘Well, it’s just that this isn’t something I’d put past that maniac who came in from the Regional Support Group.’

Just as well they weren’t on vid too, Rontaine thought.


Silent Bugler made ground, stern on- engine vents pointing directly down the accessway to the garrison tower, and well within the small theatre shield. Not a friendly gesture, considering a full power take-off would turn the place into an oven.

‘Go.’ She ordered, and Overgaard, Derajivik and Kittrich moved off the bridge, down and out the boarding ramp, Team Blue-6 (more conservatively armoured than their rivals in team-17), the boarding platoon and the customs troops, equal in strength.

They were in commercial standard blast vests and helmets, using straight E-11s without the squad support weaponry, mostly retired soldiers. Their normal job was search and seizure, and they deserved more respect than they usually got.


Overgaard looked like, and to some degree had been meant to look like, Lord Vader. That crack about a body double had been taken seriously.

Not to the extent of impersonation- that would be suicidally dumb- but close enough to suggest the same sort of total, unsparing approach, give the impression of the ruthless machine.

It seemed to be working. They simply stomped into the facility flashing ID, brushed past reception, stared down the naval troopers, said hi to the other stormtroopers stationed there- and got to the Admiral’s office, against the outer walls of the building, to find it had been welded shut from the inside.

‘Stand back-’ Overgaard said, and was about to try to force the door when Derajivik said

‘Wait. Trooper, your ion gun, give it to me.’ Pointing to one of the boarding platoon. He took the gun, and shot the door repeatedly, blasting it until it started to throw off electric arcs.

‘What was the point of that?’ Overgaard asked.

‘To short out or premature any boobytraps.’ Derajivik said, handing back the ion gun and drawing his blaster.

‘Does it work?’ Kittrich asked.

‘Not infallibly, no.’


Overgaard decided to take the chance anyway; he and the bulkiest stormtrooper charged the door, smashing into the plasteel- it was not a blast door, being shot with ion bolts had failed to improve it, and it gave, opening on to a corner office with a large charred patch on the open window and a bleeding man on the floor, in naval uniform. Not the admiral.

‘What happened?’ Derajivik shouted at the wounded man.

‘Window…traitor, his aide and his secretary…jet packs.’

The scout team moved to the window and tried scanning for him, detector units, weapon sights and helmet sensors; Overgaard looked at the man on the floor. ‘One question. How did you know he was a traitor?’

An incoherent gurgle for an answer. Overgaard picked him up and shook him. No sympathy. ‘How. Did. You. Know?’

‘You sure they didn’t give you a copy of Vader’s personality chip with that suit?’ Derajivik asked. ‘He’s out of it, and most of us don’t have jump packs.’

Good point. Call the ship, and after him!’ Overgaard decided, and charged off heading for ground level.
‘Go ahead, I’ll catch you up.’ One of the scouts said. They did, piling back down the stairwells.

On the way Kittrich asked ‘How does an old man like that know how to use a jet pack?’


‘Soldiers don’t get hatched-‘ Derajivik started to say, and half the stormtroopers turned round to glare at him. ‘All right, front-line marines do, but vice-admirals, not usually. He must have been a young officer once, and he was probably a dangerous idiot then, too.’

‘Could it be possible that his aide and his secretary kidnapped him?’ Kittrich asked.

‘Find out when we catch him.’

They made it out of the building, and then the scout they had left behind rappelled down the outer face of the tower to join them.


‘He’s on the run from Black Sun operatives.’ The trooper reported. ‘The assassin- disguised as a naval officer, the dying guy on the floor- broke in about ten minutes before we landed.’

‘How do you know he was Black Sun?’ Overgaard asked.

‘The operative gave off their programmed identification pheromone.’ The scout trooper said.

‘Now I’m baffled.’ Derajivik said. ‘How do you find out what pheromones- no, wait, I don’t want to know.’

‘Pick him up by the scent glands, and squeeze.’ The trooper deadpanned.


‘Move.’ Overgaard demanded, annoyed because he now had no sense of smell.

‘Where? Every minute’s head start gives them three kilometres’ lead, even with crappy jet packs. In this, as long as they stay below line of sight in among the corridors and chambers, they could be half way to the horizon by now. There’s no point giving chase on foot, we’ll have to scan for them.’

‘Just as well we came in a customs corvette then, isn’t it?’ Overgaard said, and called the Silent Bugler.

Two things occurred instantly to Rontaine; the admiral ran, so he thinks, or his staff think, he can’t trust his own people to protect him- and he may be right.

Second, if he gets killed- or even more embarrassingly, makes it to the squadron under his own power, we are not going to be Captain Lennart’s favourite people.

‘Stand by for both modes of take off. If I order ion drive, I want a fast ramp up to maximum power and a slow coupling to the ion stream- as much energy into the tower as is consistent with not being shot while escaping. If I order repulsors, that means a normal takeoff with no violence.’ She gave the preparatory order.


Considering the timing- assassin made his attempt, ten minutes ago. They touched down- five minutes. They had been in a position to notice anyone jet-packing to freedom five minutes ago, and had seen nothing.

She would shout at the ground team later. For the moment, consider this as a customs problem. Start with the fundamentals; a fleeing man. Not running from them, he hadn’t had time to anticipate them.

His goal; escape. Environment; industrial. Not actually all that complex, some holes and corners but not nearly as many as a comparable cityscape.

Relatively easy to sweep, few- if, considering how deserted it was, any- friendlies. Good to evade pursuit in the short term, not in the long term.


If he had time to make preparations then somewhere in there, among the pits and hangars and bays and accessways, is an escape ship. If not- then, with three people, he will try to get to one of the grounded shuttles on the hardstanding.

Pursuit on the ground would be difficult, verging on pointless. Recall them?

‘Life form scan- bioelectric activity and body heat.’ She ordered, and after a few seconds the data started to come in. Apart from the obvious- five signatures in one group, moving quickly- running pace- through the tunnels. Three in another, moving faster, but the five were ahead and moving to an intercept position.

No, Don’t recall them. Where would that map to the surface?


‘Ground force,’ she used the ship’s active optical scan- fancy term for searchlight- to highlight the nearest access shaft, ‘move to intercept. We-’

A green flash, and the computed interception point lit up in a fireball as dumped energy flashed the duracrete to vapour. That was MTL fire, low power probably only for the sake of having to crash- start the reactor.

The scan system was howling, directing their attention upwards, where the Carrack was rolling to bring to bear for a second shot, and the two Fulgur were wasting no time opening fire on her.

Lances of medium turbolaser fire pounded into the heavy corvette, she returned fire but the two fast frigates were too well shielded and too fast on their feet for it to matter. Sarlatt was, anyway.

Yeklendim didn’t really know how best to use his ship’s speed, tried to manoeuvre so radically he took his own guns off target; he hadn’t yet learned that fine art. One was enough.


The Carrack was putting most of it’s weapon power into holding them off, and missing; the shot it did spare to fire down at the base hit between their last aim point and the command tower.

The base defences were coming on line; all those empty sockets- but enough had some weapon in them to make a difference.

Assuming they knew who to fire at. Shot was going up indiscriminately at both Fulgur as well as the Carrack, and there was too much fire being thrown around to last long.

‘Repulsors, get us moving.’

The Silent Bugler came off the dirt running, accelerating out to the crater, through the dust and debris. Most of the ground detachment had been knocked down, some flash- blinded by the hit; they picked themselves up, the wounded started to limp back towards the landing point- and saw the corvette go past overhead.

Time for that once the prime objective had been served. The corvette weaved and shimmered, flying evasive- the defence turbolasers on the main garrison tower took one shot at them that turned a monorail downrange into a smear of dust greying the sky, then ceased fire, uncertain who the enemy was.


Rontaine ordered her corvettes not to return fire and clarify the situation, then scanned downwards. Blast waves would have echoed through the underground tunnels; the three blips were still there- of course, being airborne, they could have ridden it out more effectively than the five on foot, who team Blue-6 were closing on.

There was a larger thermal signature, a small powerplant compatible with a reactor; whose? Remote startup, com ahead to droids? Could be. Classification- probably a shuttle.

Move to intercept and- another bolt from the black as the Carrack tried again, aiming for the shuttle this time. Fortunately, they overdid it; the bolt punched deep, carrying too much power to shed it’s energy on contact.

It burned it’s way down through ferrocrete into bedrock, drilled a deep, narrow cone and sent up a huge plume of vapourised matter, staining the sky again.

Anyone without a breath mask, out in that- their lungs would need quarrying. Pick the detachment up now, before it got any worse? Or consider them expendable in the service of the Empire?

Await the next tactical step. Blue-6 had found their way beneath the surface; found their targets. Five people, all in powersuits- a form of mechanised armour that the Imperial military couldn’t quite see the point of.

They didn’t make a man so much better armoured that he could afford to ignore blaster fire, never mind squad support repeater and sniper rifle bolts. They cost too much and needed too much looking after, and they gave a feeling of false confidence, made the wearer that much more liable to walk into traps.


It was a close-range ambush in an unlit corridor, both sides running on reflex without much time to plan. Between the T-21, two DLT-19s and the Plex, only two of the five even got their own shots off.

A flare of lasers in the dark, and one miss, one trooper hit in the thigh; not dead, but that was someone else to carry. One of the wounded powersuited men tried to blow them all up.

Stupid to try to shoot the grenade out of his hand; instead, they blew his arm off at the shoulder and shot it again to push it away down the freight access corridor.

Two of them were still alive; quickly, shell them and take them along for interrogation.

Not before the Carrack registered the thermal detonator going off, and decided to try to eliminate both sides, but the base had partial shielding up now. That would make life difficult later, but it was useful now.


The turbolaser bolt splashed off the shields high in the atmosphere, highlighting the irregular, billowing, not yet firmly established dome of the theatre shield.

It had already taken a fair battering, and now it attempted the only move left to it; kamikaze. It rolled over, nosed down, accelerated towards the base.

Boarding Platoon BD-32 had been lucky; they came across three blips in a tunnel. And six droids, which went some way towards an explanation of how a deskbound, middle-aged flag officer could manage a difficult and demanding run for his life.

Then things got very confusing, as the admiral’s aide grabbed him and levelled a blaster pistol at his head.

‘Out of my way or the old man gets it.’ The aide snarled; the confidential secretary shouted ‘He’s trying to kidnap him, he’s trying to defect-‘and pointed her own gun at the aide, but got smashed in the ribs and knocked down by a backhanded blow from one of the droids.


Their attached medic took a chance. Hand signalled ‘don’t panic, I’m flanging it’ and took his helmet off, coughing a little in the dust.

‘If you’re Agent Springwall, then you’re the man I need to talk to. Your escape ship’s been destroyed, we have an alternative.’

‘You’re…what’s going on? You’re stormtroopers.’

‘Told you the disguise department had come through for us.’ Surgeon- Lieutenant BE-4413 said to the rest of the platoon, hoping they were quick-witted enough to keep up. ‘Looks that way, doesn’t it? We’re your exfiltration escort.’


‘I’m not Springwall.’ The aide said, and the fact that he didn’t react more strongly condemned him. If he had been a legitimate Imperial, he would certainly not have been that blasé about it.

Was he going to try and bluff his way out? Another crash and rumble from overhead- possibly just reflected recoil from one of the defence guns, possibly a hit, and more dust in the air.

‘Operations screwed up and misfiled the codenames again? Why am I not surprised? I’ll take her, follow us and move fast, we’ll get you back to the Alliance.’

Not a qualm. A few quivers, but it was fairly obvious, now, that the Admiral’s aide was a rebel plant who had chosen this mad moment to grab him and try to make a home run.

He visibly thought, yes, that makes sense, things are pretty chaotic at the moment, it’s possible they could have screwed the codenames up- but if operations is that far off balance, how did they manage to pull together this many fake stormtroopers?


It was almost as much a surprise to the surgeon-lieutenant when one of the squad snipers took the shot as it was to the aide. A DLT-20A, as he was glancing down at the surgeon- lieutenant examining the confidential secretary.

An unarmoured man- a kill, of course, clean through the head missing his jetpack. No boom today. Well, not one right here and now, just plenty of others.

BE-4413 threw himself over the admiral to cover him as the rest of the platoon hosed fire into the droids. Splinters everywhere as all six- two astromechs, a protocol and three combat droids- got shredded.


Flight under the dome of the shield was tricky, but not impossible. Repulsors were, being gravitic, inherently feeble. They were clean, and no more dangerous than anything else that gave a craft the opportunity to fly into buildings, but they drew a lot of power for relatively little momentum.

A planetary-defensive dome shield could easily suck that away, leave a repulsor driven craft powerless and plummeting to earth. The corvettes were on ion drive, twitching on manoeuvre jets and exploding the air as they went, but they were still up. For now, anyway.

Corvette BD10NJ30 had landed to pick up the boarding platoon, Overgaard, Derajivik and Kittrich; just as well, that meant they were not directly present to shout at Rontaine.

That left the stormtroopers to find their way back to the surface, signal for pickup and deliver their injured- the admiral seemed to have been drugged; he was semiconscious, drooling slightly. Fine state for an Imperial flag officer. On the other hand, it meant he wouldn’t be able to interfere in operations. Good.


The slight technical hitch of being under a raised theatre shield- that was the second next problem on the list, after a plummeting Carrack corvette.

If it did hit the shield, it carried enough mass- energy to detonate very convincingly. Referred energy would probably touch off the shield generator too. Not much fun to be standing next to, or flying around under.

Both Fulgur were rippling streams of fire into the maimed Carrack, trying to tear it apart before it completed the fall down from geosynch to the theatre shield.

Rontaine decided to do better than that. ‘Provornyy, I have a plan. Cover us.’ Touch down; drop the ramp- the stormtroopers triple- timed up it. Phase one complete and successful, with only a few small- all right, medium- holes in the landscape.

Then off, and call up what of a map their sensors had been able to put together, and look for the shield generator.


‘Silent Bugler, this is Provornyy.’ Sarlatt’s voice came over the audio channel. ‘If your plan involves shooting out the shield and letting that thing power-dive into the base, then I’ll blast you myself. That’s not going to work.’

It would have been a useful way of covering their escape, and Rontaine was careful not to curse audibly.

Then she got the idea. ‘Negative, Provornyy, but close. The shields are controlled, not manned directly. If we blast out the control relay the shields should go into stable shutdown, we can find a gap and the collapsing shield should still be enough to take the impact.’

‘Too many shoulds in that plan.’ Sarlatt stalled, trying to think of a better way. The carrack was a riddled wreck, no gun or engine function left, but the damned thing was refusing to explode. It as also on collision course for the base shields already.

‘I’m under it, I’m willing to take the risk.’ Rontaine said.

‘You really think, in that concrete wilderness, they didn’t bother to install land lines?’ Sarlatt said.

Silent Bugler rolled inverted and fired a barrage down into the concrete. ‘Past tense.’


The defence turrets came to life again and started shooting at them; only a couple of seconds sooner than they would anyway when all three corvettes under the shield banked to bring weapons to bear, and opened up on the comms grid on the spire of the command base.

Six twin mounts on each ship, each barrel spitting out five half- megaton bolts per second; the facility was armoured, but it never expected to be attacked from under the shield- relied on natural thermal conductivity to channel away the power.

Not enough to shed ninety megatons a second. The upper levels of the tower vapourised, the layer immediately below melted and slumped down on the rest.

The shield unit lost control and went into an autonomic failure mode, stable shutdown, collapsing slowly. Both Fulgur, firing on the lead ship’s solution, aimed for what they hoped would turn out to be a weak point or they could at least turn into one.

The three corvettes added what they could from beneath the shield; not helped when one of them, BD10NJ30, took a defence laser hit that blew it’s bridge module apart.


Overgaard and the rest of the boarding detachment were in the lower bay still, being checked out; they felt the thump, the strained screaming crackle of the shield generator overloading under a two hundred megaton hit, and the ship lose gravity and go ballistic. Oh crap, he thought, not again.

Who else was going to do something about it; the crew on the wrecked bridge module? Where else was there? The ship felt as if it was falling through treacle- an effect of the theatre shield, but the surface wasn’t that far away.

Derajivik had had the sense to bring a breath mask. He was fine, and looking around for some way to make a difference.

‘If you can get control of this thing transferred down to engineering, I can probably fly her from there.’ Overgaard told him.

‘Assuming they don’t blast us again.’ Derajivik said, but he was already moving.


They had maybe a minute, less if they were going to be shot sooner than that. That was no time to go through the proper security procedures.

The personnel in there were customs service anyway; one ship technical officer, who was not going to get in the way of anyone who had a plan that might save them from death.

‘No time to do this properly. I’ll have to lobotomise it. Where’s that zap gun? That circuit breaker, trip it- bridge that there. Isolate that console and bring up DRCS. And have a metre length of scable standing by.’

‘What?’ the technical officer asked, but the crew were jumping fast enough.

‘All right, begin the verification procedure on that console and stand back.’ Derajivik said; Overgaard did, then jumped out of the way as a stream of artificial lightning blasted into the main multifunction watch point Derajivik had pointed out.


‘Right, the security system’s in infinite regress, the ship’s anybody’s; you’re setting output through the engines directly, give me a moment- right, now at least you can tell which way up is.’ Derajivik had patched in sensor feed from one of the surviving turrets.

‘It’s that easy to blow out the main security overrides?’ Overgaard said, not believing it.

‘No, we’ve got maybe five minutes before they come online on the secondaries and shut you out.’

‘Infinity isn’t what it used to be.’ Overgaard said, trying to remember how he was supposed to do this. Muscle memory was a bit harder when you didn’t have your own muscles anymore.


Feed power to the engines; this was worse than tank treads, something like trying to play an organ with his feet- but it was that or crash and burn. Interesting that with so little biology left, the adrenalin still seemed to flow.

Aim for the pale apple-green highlight on the sky, overlain on the flickering blue-purple shield dome itself shown by glittering flares where the dust brushed against it.

The ship kept sagging, falling off, being dragged down by the effects of the shield even as it failed; partial-atmospheric, then one third power, then full military power trying to balance the ship, very small by the standards of deep space war, on it’s tail and shove it up into the sky.


The third corvette, FL89IA12, got caught in a cage of turbolaser bolts- the misses splattering off the inside of the shield- and first a plume of molten metal and vapour, then the entire ship burnt, flaring out and leaving only a few solid fragments and molten droplets to rain down on the ferrocrete.

Then the Fulgurs’ salvo hit and burst a gap in the shield. Rontine’s corvette thundered it’s way out of the gap on emergency overload power, scraping wingtips on the energy barrier as it billowed and fluctuated, caught between closing and unravelling entirely.

Overgaard almost wished he had some form of religion; something better to say than ‘ohshitohshitohshit’- provided it wasn’t a deathbed conversion.

The corvette spasmed as part of the energy field blew out, kicked and tumbled as it passed free of the shield- crunching sound as the compensators on board fought to keep up with the sudden surge, and in some place failed.

Then the brilliant white light from behind them as the Carrack hit the shield, all of the remaining energy flowed into it and it shone briefly like a five million ton lightbulb filament. It burnt; and whoever was left under it was in no state to pursue.

Provornyy took BD10NJ30 in tow, before her security programs recovered. The two frigates and now five corvettes manoeuvred for hyperspace entry.

Rontaine started to com Sarlatt on the Provornyy, then decided against it. She would only shout at him- about what a clusterkriff a quiet pickup job had turned out to be, about losing a ship and nearly losing another. If his temper would stand it, she doubted if hers would.

She had taken her ship into the fire, and brought it out again- but could not say the same for all her charges. All there was to do was hope that, whatever solution they could put together using that man, it would be worth the price.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

This is the last section of what was intended to be chapter 32b; is this single scene by single scene thing a worthwhile way of writing it? It seems to flow faster, would you prefer that or three to four scene chapters?

Oh yes, finally got around to doing that edit on 32a.
Anyway, this is the last of the midgame, 33 should be the first moves of the end game.



The specific ship Falldess intended to kidnap was coming out of her biannual refit. She had chosen with a careful eye on the schedules. A ship which would have to be taken over entire from an active crew was out.

And an eye to her own advancement. When all was said and done, Karu class were destroyers. Light, but nonetheless.

‘Karu’ meant ‘lady’- worthy, noblewoman- in one of the ancient dialects of Standard, she thought, and all the existing examples were named after women or the xenological equivalent who had made some difference to the sweep of galactic events.

It actually seemed to be a back- handed insult, implying that the female, nurturer and egg- layer, of the species had made so little difference on average that they had to be left out of the ordinary sequence of ships like the Senator and Admiral class cruisers, and given special recognition.

Part of the New Order’s non-huMan policy, probably.


Falldess didn’t greatly care; was confident that she could take that and turn it against them. There was an additional insult that did concern her, though, hidden in the specifications- they were not fast ships.

Fast was always better than slow, and destroyers above all else were supposed to be fast, witness the fate of the old Vic-I’s. They had been designed to roughly destroyer size, for set piece battles of attrition, and were little use for much else.

Not so much badly designed as well matched to an exacting, but narrow, range of circumstances, which being fit for that made them of relatively little use in peacekeeping, law-enforcement and hunter operations. Excellent deterrents, though. They had largely ended up sidelined on ceremonial and garrison detail.

Twenty-five hundred ‘g’ was reckoned average and adequate for a fighting ship, much below that and the relative advantage you would give away through being easily outmanoeuvred would make for a disproportionately easy kill, very much more and to build the ship to take that kind of stress meant sacrificing space and weight that would be better spent on firepower.

The Karu class were average or a shade better, no brilliant performance there. What they did have was a solid main armament, twenty sixty-five teraton heavies in ten twin mounts. More than triple the firepower of her heavy frigate, even if less dexterity to wield it with.


That was in part a self- realisation, one that she hoped was wrong. In that clash with the rRasfenoni, she had fought with some footwork, but not much thought given to actual manoeuvre, not until it was too late.

She hadn’t used her ship’s speed to the full, hadn’t done enough to exploit position and agility. She might be better off with a slower, heavier hull.

She had written home about that; by now the entire planet would know, and they would be up in arms. That could make life interesting…but it would take her far too long to pick out and train enough of them to make a crew.

On exercise, she had had a chance to study her squadronmates; they had come nowhere close to filling out the full program, but what they had done had been revealing.


Dordd, the man whose ship she was currently on, was half out of his mind with frustration trying to make his useless crew perform; he was better at this than he realised.

Cold and formal, precise and disciplined, but for all the difference between their personal styles it was clear that in his ship- handling he had been understudying Lennart, consciously or not.

Provided he didn’t let this experience drain his confidence and enthusiasm, he arguably had more of what the Starfleet wanted from an officer than Lennart did, or she herself.

However, making up the difference between her own crew and what she needed to run a Karu- class destroyer with his rejects- at first, she had been reluctantly accepting, then when she had seen the quality of the personnel he had intended to palm off on her, furious.

When she had the fuller picture of what the quality of his crew was like, she had actually felt rather sorry for him.


Then she had got around to asking why. Captain of the Line Lennart was trying to get a two-for-one; relieve some of the pressure on his own former exec, and hand those pretend excuses for spacemen over to someone who he thought could deal with them.

He knew her background, knew that she had successfully dealt with worse; that he still trusted her after she had put her ship too far in harm’s way was interesting.

Considering the almost absurdly close relations he seemed to have with his crew, he didn’t strike her as indifferent to casualties. Hardened, used to dealing in the marketplace of death? Valued his people all the more for that they might not be around forever?

Either way, it was his word that had permitted- no, sponsored- this mad enterprise.


They had not seen him at his best, she knew, because every exercise, he and his ship were holding back, shaping the battle in order to give the other ships a chance to show- and sharpen- what they could do.

Even only giving, say, eighty percent, he was a magician. The way that huge, mottled ship danced and twisted like a starfighter, weaving and gliding through the fire, between the shots of a salvo it seemed, moving at angles you would swear would make it impossible for her to keep her main battery on target- but somehow did.

The crew, though- did he achieve that despite or because of them? Any community that size would inevitably contain a proportion of lunatics, idiots and failures.


How did it really work? She would have liked to spend a few days on board Black Prince, just to get the measure of it, the method behind the magic that turned madmen like that Lieutenant and his team into useful, no, exceptional spacers. Dordd probably knew some of the tricks, but in this crowd?

He hadn’t even given her the worst. Dividing Dynamic’s crew into blocks of two thousand, the bottom group he intended to beach outright, and most of them would be handed dishonourable discharges along the way and told it was that or a blaster bolt.

The second worst lot, he intended to beach ‘detached pending reassignment’, which meant they could stay there until they rotted.

The third worst he proposed to transfer to her, men who might just have some possibility of improvement but were unlikely to demonstrate it in an environment as bad as Dynamic’s.

Dordd proposed to take his ship into combat with a little more than half her nominal crew, and actually felt very much better for it.


There was nowhere where she could get all her existing crew together with the new draft to address them all, although she did have office and computer space to work out a watch and quarters bill.

A few of the wounded had recovered in time, although having to leave a detail behind to look after Tarazed Meridian and continue repairs balanced that out.

It pretty much balanced out, except for one thing- she didn’t have to trust any of the transferees in positions of responsibility, because so few of them were rated for any. There was hardly a rank stripe among them, and even fewer good conduct badges.

He could have done a lot worse, she realised; transferred skilled, experienced men from her crew to his, or unloaded some of his very worst on her. And he had been tempted to.

What she had her own little shoulder devil whispering in her ear about was to try to poach Lieutenant Aldrem and his team, by offering him the gunnery officer’s slot on Hialaya Karu.

Unfortunately, Dordd seemed to have thought of it first, and passed on to her those of his own team disgruntled by the change, including most of his own fire direction team.


The only way she could get this lot together, given Dynamic’s status as a fast interceptor destroyer without troop and flight bays, would be to assemble them in spacesuits on the ship’s outer hull.

Actually, that might not be a bad idea. Anyone who couldn’t manage their suit well enough to not drift off or decompress was summarily dismissed the service.

Actually, Dordd- and Lennart- might approve. Consider it plan B. For the moment, com her people and tell them to rouse out the transferees and herd them towards the boarding locks.

Stormtroopers. There was one possible solution to the problem, and also a problem in itself- her frigate had one batallion of troopers, and four, after the loss of one flight bay three, squadrons.

The Karu- class had the same fighter-light, troop heavy intervention outfit as the Victories, two squadrons and two regiments.

The ground crew and pilots were with her, but whether, and what, they would find to fly, she didn’t know. She did hope the ship’s stormtrooper complement was on board, or at least standing by.


Hialaya Karu was just finishing refit and was ready to be handed back from dockyard hands to her crew, which seemed to be he perfect time to yoink a ship.

There were other ships in the sector she could have opted for, but none for which the timing was so perfect. She did have to wonder if Kor Alric was aware that Lennart had forged his signature on the ops order.

Emergence, and it was obvious that the yard had no idea that they were coming. A waste of a deepdock, mooring it in parking orbit around a planet. In addition to being able to move to where the problem was, they were also suppose to be elusive targets.

When something that fragile and that valuable was planted in place, it certainly should have been better defended, but there was almost nothing, only a Golan-II StarGun.

At least the planet was inhabitable, which was good. Somewhere to ditch the incorrigibles.


Dordd did not want to leave his own bridge- he needed the system and the monitors to remain in control of the situation, suspected he wouldn’t trust the crew unless he could keep an eye on them. He brought the destroyer in- accurately but painfully slowly- so it was Falldess who got the fun job of telling the commander of Hialaya Karu that she was here to steal his ship.

He was in a borrowed office on the deepdock skeleton that had already been more or less cleared, ready to move back on board; a sharp-nosed, middle aged man, older than she was, and wary of her.

‘Commander Falldess? The dock told me you were coming, but I don’t understand why. Official observer?’

‘Commander Carcovaan.’ She acknowledged him. How to do this? Ease and ooze him out, break it gently, or brisk and brash?


‘Your ship has been reassigned.’ She started. Perhaps it was best to be brutally cheerful, it’s all in the game and you just lost this round, just the way of the service.

‘Good.’ He said, tragically mistaken. ‘Just as real things were starting to happen, finally a chance to-‘

She cut him off. ‘The ship Hialaya Karu has been reassigned- without her crew.’ Watching his face fall, she decided ‘hard-nosed bitch’ might be the right way to go about this after all.

‘What?’ he spluttered. ‘But…she’s my ship, my command, who? Who’s doing this to me?’ Stunned shock, almost bereavement.

Operational Pursuit Squadron 851-Yod.’ Falldess said.

‘I’ll…I’ll appeal. I’ll contact 851 and have the decision reversed.’ He said, and from his expression he knew he was grasping at straws.


The timing works against you. Region’s unlikely to have time to hear your appeal until after Hialaya Karu deploys.’ She said, trying to look ruthless, and did not entirely succeed when he said

‘Some of my crew have followed me from ship to ship, commission to commission; I finally get a chance to make a name for myself, something I can use to push them on, and it gets taken away from me?’

‘That is the way it is.’ She acknowledged.

What should a heartless cow think at this point? ‘How long have you had Hialaya Karu?’ she asked him.

‘Year and a half- exactly, in five days time.’ He said.

Was it impossible for you to make an opportunity for yourself in a year and a half?’ she said, stingingly.

‘It’s difficult to hunt things that aren’t officially there.’ He snapped back at her.

‘I managed it.’ She said.


‘You?’ he said. ‘You’re going to be taking over my ship?’

‘In ten years of close and distant escort, I managed four convoy actions, with a total bag of two Corellian, a Sienar and an old Kuat corvette, and a mutual on a renegade Strike Cruiser- he managed to pound my Carrack beyond repair, but I did the same for him.’

‘Oh, come on- a fleet unit, a light destroyer kept on a short rein with virtually no freedom of movement, how was I supposed to find anything for my people to do?

This is the chance, this is the golden opportunity I have waited my entire career for, and you’re trying to take it away from me.’ He said, finding a vein of anger.

‘Don’t you think there was a reason you weren’t chosen for secondment to the pursuit squadron? Chances are not something you find, they are something you carve out, and you didn’t try hard enough.’ She snarled at him.


They were both standing now, glaring at each other; she seriously wondered if he was going to haul off and hit her. If the circumstances had been reversed, she would have been hard put not to.

She threw the data on the desk in front of him, and announced ‘My letter of authority.’

That set it to display the authorisation, and he picked it up and read it- she could tell exactly when he got to the signature. He went visibly paler, slumped back into his chair and seemed to shrink slightly.

‘That’s it.’ He said, broken- sounding, anger dissolved on a wave of hopelessness. ‘End of a career, end of the dream. An agent of the privy council-what does he have against me?’

‘Probably nothing personal, but one of the privileges of that rank is that they don’t need reasons. You feel bad now? Think carefully- if you still do have anything worth living for, don’t challenge him on it.’ She advised him.


‘Why me?’ he said, still too depressed to try to be professional about it.

‘You were unlucky enough to have a decent sized ship coming out of refit at exactly the time when I happened to need one. Look, I’m from Bya Amadi.

A thousand years ago, someone tried to burn my home world with high speed kinetic missiles. We finally found the beings responsible; actually, I found them.

There is no way I am going to be left out of that battle, no matter what I have to do or who I have to step on to be there; and Kor Alric respects vengeance as a motive. Enough to make me distinctly worried, actually, but this is the way it’s going to be.’ She said.


She paused for a moment, then ‘Do you want me to inform them?’

He stood up, ten years older than he had been that morning. ‘No. No, I’ll do it, I’ll break the bad news.’

‘I’ll have your effects moved dockside.’ She said, turning to go.

‘You-‘ he hesitated. ‘You will bring Hialaya Karu back in one piece?’

‘Considering what the pursuit squadron’s going up against, I wouldn’t base your hopes on it.’ She said.


Two hours later, the old crew were on board the dock, the new crew had moved in and Hialaya Karu disengaged from the dock, and “hoisted the pennant”- changed her transponder beacon to the tactical number 851-Yod-4-A.

‘Any problems?’ Dordd signalled across.

What to say? Did it matter? ‘No, no problems. We were lucky; full stormtrooper complement, squadron of /ln and a squadron of Bombers.’ And someone else’s fortune stolen, but that was not his or her problem, now.

‘Good.’ Dordd said, so non-committally that she couldn’t decide if he knew what had happened or not. ‘We have three hours to put that ship through it’s paces, shake your crew down and make sure everything works as it’s supposed to, then we proceed to rendezvous off Ord Corban to join the rest of the squadron.

There is a target appreciation, but no formal battle plan- I believe Captain Lennart intends to fight an open, manoeuvring battle. The one thing I am sure of is that it is going to be a bloody day.’

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

No comment on the single- scene idea? Well, this bit is a single scene that expanded to more or less chapter length anyway, so I can have it both ways. Unlike Mirhak-Ghulej, poor sod.



Ch 33a

Two fleet tankers had arrived at the lagrange point, and one commercial transport full of ferrocrete mix. Which was all well and good, as long as nobody got confused and pumped their fuel tanks full of cement.

Ten thousand seconds, that was all it took to burn an Imperator’s fuel toruses dry. Black Prince had been modified in this, as in so many other things, but the installation of additional torii hadn’t kept up with the increased power output.

On watch, managing the docking and transfer procedure, one of the junior officers from the navigation division. On call, Brenn. In the day cabin, don’t call me unless the sky starts showing cracks, the captain getting some much needed rest.

In all cases, the more manoeuvrable ship moved to link up with the less manoeuvrable. So the tankers remained on station, and the warships moved to meet them; all the other ships of the squadron had more thrust than the fleet auxiliaries, they would all line up, one behind the other- not directly, of course.


Plug in, open the locks, cycle the hypermatter from the tanker to the destroyer, convince them that yes, they really did need that much. One tanker would be drained dry here and released to local control again, the other would accompany the squadron to the rendezvous point and top off Dynamic and Hialaya Karu.

The absence of any spoiling attack on the tankers was a good sign; it probably meant that the rebels were convinced that the forces of the Empire believed them to be long gone, or at least convinced enough to take the risk of hanging around a little longer, and making a planned withdrawal with as much machinery as possible.

Accidents and cockups, they were the problem now, for at least the next hour. The vibe had gone through the squadron, somehow the tension had carried- there had been individual actions, exercise and preparation, but this was it. Everyone was keyed up, and right now would be just the time for someone to make a mistake.


Brenn was watching the rest of the squadron shuffle into an efficient stepped column, out of each other’s ion flares, waiting for that mistake. Trying to catch it in time to do something about it.

They had tried not to select fools from the sector group, and had evidently not been entirely successful- there had been no time to replace Subtractor, and Guillemot’s new captain was still an unknown quantity. Their replacement turret was a botch job, the best that could be done in the time but likely to fail under stress.

Voracious’ crew was a problem. However high the individual standard was, they were not yet a team.

They were in line immediately behind Black Prince, because they would need time to separate out the fuel issued to them to the storage cell farm serving the flight line.

Black Prince was first because she had most to take on, and then she could stand by and monitor the others, and use her tractor beams in case of that accident.


Brenn hoped Voracious’ air group were putting in as much time as possible on their sims. They hadn’t had a chance to exercise with the wing in it’s current composition at all.

Fortunately- or unfortunately- most of the requisitions to the sector group had gone through, with no more then the expected proportion of bureaucratic bungling.

Why? Surely the criminals in sector group would try to cross them up? Only two alternatives; either there were enough loyal men in the sector to obey the orders they received, or, in some more subtle way than a complete stonewall, they had set a trap.

Both tankers had been scanned to within an inch of their lives, looking for boobytraps or armed self destruct devices or any other explosive little present; the slicing team were working through their computers now, and they would dock once they were convinced there were no nasty surprises waiting there, either.


Amazing how well briefed the journalists were. Slightly less amazing than how amenable they were to discipline.

In theory, they should be rushing around, shoving lenses in people’s faces, ignoring security, disrupting routine, being obnoxious, pushy and deceitful and generally doing whatever it took to get the story. A stormtrooper battle group put a significant crimp in their normal routine. Probably the only force that could.

Aleph-3’s being appointed assistant press officer- Cat Herder In Chief as she put it- was another minor blessing. It kept her out of the skipper’s hair for a while.

There were onboard romances, even thought there weren’t really supposed to be. Prejudicial to good order. They never escaped notice, either, something would always be brought to official attention- apart from anything else out of sheer jealousy.

Officially, it was completely forbidden. On a small ship with a permanent base, convoy escort work and defence orbit, it was possible to have a home life, close enough to go home often enough to keep a partnership or a formal marriage alive.


Most ships weren’t so lucky, and the divorce and separation rate for long haul patrol ships within a sector group was over sixty percent. For regional and strategic forces, which could be posted from one side of the galaxy to another at a moment’s notice, ninety percent.

Small wonder that the men and women on board ship sometimes turned to each other. That usually made things worse. It put additional stress on the couple trying to make a home they shared with thirty-seven thousand other people, and they couldn’t exactly move to a better neighbourhood.

Most pairings- or, to be open minded, triplings and quadruplings- would break up under the stress of managing a relationship and doing their duty at the same time.

One night stands and three day wonders weren’t the answer either, because the misery, bad temper and occasional acts of stupidity caused by relationships breaking up were at least as much a problem.

Lennart did occasionally turn a blind eye, when he thought that a particular arrangement was going to work out.

Witness Aldrem who had, when the business was boiled down to it’s essentials, kidnapped a local woman and brought her back with him on a hijacked starship, and been rewarded for it by promotion to the officer class.

All right, that one was an exception. Still, the skipper seemed to enjoy making exceptions.


What most spacemen did, most spacewomen too, was have fun in port whenever they got the chance, and hold back the nesting instinct until their hitch was up and they could afford to settle down.

Some of them never would; some would never leave the service, some would lose the plot when released back to civil life. Brenn was nine years younger than his commanding officer, had been a child during, and mesmerised by the news of, the clone wars- the main reason he had joined the Starfleet, actually.

Somehow, he had found himself staying in, and enjoying it. Now, he was the captain’s de facto left hand man and chief tactical deputy on one of the most active and most battle- honoured ships in the Starfleet.

It was tiring and stressful, but there were millions of officers who would give at least a limb to be where he was. Maybe two.

What would I do with a warehouse full of right arms? he wondered, not seriously. Enough time to make solid plans once the real problem was out of the way.

Lennart…he would stay in. If he had enough commitment to stay in the Starfleet after being bust down to lieutenant from full commander, and then claw his way back, then he wouldn’t retire.

So he had to take his social life where he could find it. A warrant officer of the stormtrooper corps, though, that was not normal by anyone’s standards. She was a problem, and she added to his problems.


She took time, and energy, away from him that the ship needed, and she was mired in this business of the Force. Which was interesting to watch, in a beside the hospital bed kind of way.

The captain didn’t seem to have changed much, but anyone who knew him could see the stress that refusing to change was placing on him.

She, and the force she was pushing on him, was endangering the rest of them through that. There were other reasons to dislike her, he was forced to admit; jealousy being one of them. If he hadn’t been capable of looking coldly at his own motives then putting them aside to do the job, he wouldn’t have been here.

Desire for advancement was one of them. If this operation was successful- if they could manage to make it successful, there was that, but he could daydream about the other side of the winning line for a second or four, couldn’t he?- then the sector group would probably be in for major reconstruction.

A command of his own? Probable- assuming he chose to leave Region. Aiming slightly higher, he had some chance of inheriting the captain’s chair on this ship, if Lennart ever did retire, or rather more likely was forced to hoist his flag.


Lennart knew he wanted that, and had no intention of retiring, so had tried to get him to accept command of a smaller ship now.

Behave, he told himself. Worrying about that now is like daydreaming of what a beautiful house it’ll be once you glue the pile of bricks together. Assemble the future one brick at a time.

No-one had made any obvious mistakes- ships metres out of place, seconds late in getting there. That was just imprecise shiphandling, nerves, wouldn’t be actively dangerous until their turn to dock, well within tractor tolerance anyway.


‘Commander?’ One of the oldest standing jokes in the Imperial fleet; a Voice from the Pit. Com-scan tech.

Brenn walked over to stand above the console.

‘Tanker’s as clean as can be expected; no boobytraps evident, physical or software, but as a fleet auxiliary that ship has various security measures, including a self destruct which could be kind of painful if it goes off while we’re attached. Disable it?’

‘Any sign that their IFF system considers us hostile?’ Brenn asked.

‘No, everything’s clean there, but there’s a manual override and we can’t scan for crew intention. Not through hull metal, anyway.’ The comtech advised.


‘You can scan for hotel systems power loading, though.’ Brenn said, meaning; do it. He was thinking of the Carrack over subsector command; subsequent analysis had shown that it had a skeleton crew on board, had been commanded by a small group of do-or-die fanatics in charge of a horde of droids.

‘Slightly lean manned, ninety percent of complement.’ The tech reported. ‘Do you want us to do that hack, Sir?’

‘Do it quietly, so they don’t realise we don’t trust them.’ Brenn said.

‘Can do, Sir.’ The tech said, nodded to two of his trickmates.


‘Ah…dreck. Commander, you may want to see this. IntSec issue.’ Another voice from the other side of the pit.

Brenn moved over to that console, looked pointedly at the technician. ‘Monitoring our systems, Sir, making sure they’re not doing the same to us.

Someone accessed Armoury Complex C1*4 twenty seconds ago, checked out a flamethrower and a heavy thermal detonator with the executive officer’s access code.’

A heavy thermal detonator was the kind they used to kneecap AT-ATs. Wouldn’t go through an armoured deck with the tensors up, but it surely would make a mess of the compartment it was initiated in.


Right now, Brenn wouldn’t trust Mirhak-Ghulej with anything more dangerous than a rubber duck.

Complex C-1-star-4 wasn’t a Legion facility, it was for crew use in the case of emergency, for defence against boarders and the like. There should have been a trooper detachment to monitor and secure- of course, they would have had to step aside for him.

Not being psychologically able to refuse orders and doubt the judgement of their superiors could be a real problem, even superiors that were known to be slightly mentally disturbed.

But not carried on the books as such, not officially, so they had defaulted to that.

Now he had an area-effect, close quarters weapon, and a bomb. That choice in itself was a pretty good pointer to his intentions. Did the legion include such a thing as a hostage negociation team?


Destabilisation was probably the closest, and somehow he doubted that it was entirely appropriate. Mirhak-Ghulej already had been, that was why he was going to do something this stupid. Someone had to go and talk him down.

Why? Brenn asked himself. Why not let him go and blow himself up, and hopefully take out their second biggest problem in doing so? Because he was part of the team? In all honesty, no.

Never was, never really had been, except in the warped sense that they needed someone within the fold, someone at arms’ length to hate.

It probably wasn’t going to work, that was one reason. Adannan- would have to be stunningly arrogant not to already be on guard. Not giving him the satisfaction of killing a man, that was what it came down to.


Brenn was just trying to add up whether he could leave the refuelling operation in the hands of a senior lieutenant, when the day cabin door slid open.

Captain Lennart, uniform tunic flapping open over a dark grey undershirt, baggy pyjama pants and fluffy bunny slippers. He looked half-slept and unshaven, no surprise really because he was.

‘Skipper, you had the force a long time ago, either that or you have the entire ship wired for sound.’ Brenn said.

‘Just applied common sense. Nothing’s happening, the rhythm is wrong,’ Lennart said, waving an arm at the holodisplay showing the tanker, ‘so I come and find you standing over an internal network station.

Either we’ve been sliced or somebody’s done something stupid. You’re having to wonder what to do about it, so that makes it the latter. What happened?’

Brenn hesitated again, not wanting to say it out loud- knowing that if he did, it would become grade A prime triple distilled scuttlebutt within seconds. Lennart looked too tired to play games, though.


‘It’s Commander Mirhak-Ghulej. He’s just signed out a flamethrower and a demolitions detonator.’

‘Dreck.’ Lennart said, and headed for the turbolift complex.

‘Skipper, let someone else go and try to reason with him.’ Brenn said. ‘At least, have him shot and put out of his misery.’

‘Another job I can’t send anyone else to do. My fault anyway, I broke him.’ Lennart said.

‘You haven’t told me what the smenge we’re supposed to be doing. I don’t know what the battle plan is. And he does have a bomb.’

‘The documents are on file- and he may have a thermal detonator, but I have fuzzy feet.’ Lennart said, glancing down.

‘If he’s reached the stage of contemplating murder-suicide, he’s too far gone for surrealism.’ Brenn cautioned. ‘He never did have much of a sense of humour, anyway.’

‘They’re not for his benefit, they’re for mine. Roust out, h’m, DF34 and tell them to meet me outside the Imperial suite.’


The unit he had named was part of the headquarters element, second batallion repulsor regiment- scouts used to thinking on their feet, not particularly heavily armed, but for this they shouldn’t need to be.

They met him in the corridor below the imperial suite, just outside the turbolift; Lennart over-rode access to the level above. His renegade exec would have to get out here, and face- what? What was it he was really trying to do? Talk the man down, or talk him into going through with it?

There were emergency access stairwells at both ends of the short corridor, and the scout platoon took up positions covering them; eminently grenadeable, but there wasn’t much room to use to avoid that.

The first unwelcome visitor came down from the level above. It was the masked Givin of Adannan’s retinue, wearing a thing clamped on to his head that looked like a torture device, but was probably a camera. As well.

The scout team had not been given orders to stop him, although it would have been their first choice. They pointed their guns at him, but there was a commotion at the other stairwell.


Lennart caught the flash of a camera lens. Dreck. Then the lift door opened.

Mirhak-Ghulej was wearing a bathrobe and a loincloth. He had put on weight- comfort eating, and a man in his broken-minded state needed a lot of comforting.

He stared wildly about him as he came out of the lift. Not now, Lennart thought, trying to resist the urgent pressure of the Force. The light side was urging him to talk Mirhak-Ghulej down, the dark side to blast him where he stood.

Thinking of both sides as actual personifications made them easier to deal with. He told them to sort it out between themselves and turned to his executive officer.


‘I was trying to dress down, but it seems as if you beat me to it. Nice day to take a bomb for a walk.’ Going to have to do this with an audience, he thought. All three of me.

‘Hmwhuhah! Place. Time. You should know better than that.’ Mirhak-Ghulej said. He sounded three- quarters mad, but the look in his eye was steady enough.

‘We spit on any rational concept of place, we stretch time to fit. Both are what little blobs of mush choose to make of them, and it isn’t right.’

‘Is this an answer, is this a solution? Doing something as incredibly disorderly as blowing yourself up?’ Lennart probed. He had gone to see Adannan, that much he knew, but whatever had been said to him, he had gone away and brooded on it and turned into this.

‘Order? Don’t use that word again.’ Mirhak-Ghulej said, more of a plea than a demand. ‘Never use that word again. There are no bridges over the screaming vortex, it’s nothing but a tissue paper veil.

What a joke to think that we could be stable in the madness and the lies. Nothing makes sense any more. It never had to, was never really supposed to. And I didn’t know.’ He showed no sign that he was aware of the minion, the film crew, and the stormtroopers.


‘We tried to tell you often enough.’ Lennart said, pitching his tone for calm assurance. ‘The extreme disrespect many of the crew showed for your person and your views wasn’t a hint? The example Gethrim and myself showed you gave nothing away?’

‘Oh, those were kindly acts. They incarnated it all, helped me to take it personally and made me feel like a champion of good order and discipline. You used me to keep the illusion alive for everyone else.’ He said, tone shifting to anger.

Was that thing armed? Lennart wondered. ‘I hope you haven’t lost it badly enough to think I shared that illusion.’ Make it personal, he was thinking, engage with the bronze-faced madman. Let him turn on me, and if I can keep him talking, I can bring him down.

‘You- you’re the worst of the lot.’ Mirhak-Ghulej said, leaning forward as if to peer at Lennart. ‘The ambidextrous man, swearing to protect and defend the martyred innocents one minute, breaking bread with the murderers’ guild the next.’

He would have shaken his finger at Lennart, if he hadn’t been doing it with the hand that held the flamethrower.


Lennart didn’t flinch. Mad dog, he was thinking, when dealing with a mad dog it is important not to show fear. Or, in this particular case, smugness.

‘I can make some sense out of what you’re saying, which under the circumstances worries me…care to talk about your latest meeting with the deputy poobah of the local guild chapter?’

‘He showed me that- that I had been living a fraud of a life, in a cause which didn’t really understand me at all. That there was a lie under all the truths. That I had been used and abused, and that I had helped break myself to the lies.’

‘Most people do. It’s common enough.’ Lennart said.

‘You mean what I’m doing fits a pattern?’ Mirhak-Ghulej said, part of him pleased, part of him angry and the two falling out over it.


‘Twenty-five thousand years?’ Lennart said. ‘How much time do you think they needed to work the patterns out? There are predictable rhythms in everything, contingencies and dependencies.

There are patterns for how those patterns evolve, interact and change over time, patterns for how the patterns of change are expected to change- and so on ad absurdum.

What difference do you think that ought to make?’ Lennart said calmly, asking him to think, which he would hopefully do out loud.

‘I know what difference it makes.’ Mirhak-Ghulej wailed. ‘It means that men without principle can use a man, identify what I care about and play me off it like a stimulus response machine.’


‘What makes him less predictable than you?’ Lennart asked. A lot of things, actually, training, upbringing, way too many personal psychological kinks. But the principle was there. ‘

You can play them, push their buttons just as they do to you, and who thinks first and fastest- as the Ubiqtorate say, Who Analyses, Wins. What else did you think he was going to do?’ Lennart asked.

He could probably save Mirhak-Ghulej, at the price of some of his self respect and sanity. Both of their sanities, actually.

Using his former exec- no way anyone, even Lennart, could justify retaining him in that position now- as a kamikaze against Adannan probably wouldn’t work, even though just maybe he might be able to swing it, afterwards.


‘I thought he was an agent of the privy council,’ Mirhak-Ghulej said, ‘A being of order and discipline. I found a licensed pirate, a gargoyle, a man- if the term stretches-‘

‘It does.’ Lennart interrupted, but Mirhak-Ghulej kept going.

‘-who would patent a system for stealing red- hot stoves. Do you know how he plans to use you?’

‘I have an idea.’ Lennart said, thinking fast about how to phrase it. Would it serve to appear the kind of man who could pose a credible threat to Adannan, which meant being almost as cruel and devious?

Was, for that matter, Kor Alric listening in himself? Almost certainly, at least by camera and probably by telepathy. H’m.

Another thing that it would be distinctly bad to say- provided he doesn’t use you as a weapon against me. Thinking too hard on that issue might just convince Mirhak-Ghulej to let that bomb go after all.


Adannan would have a win-win set up here if he, Lennart, wasn’t careful. By making me move to stop one of my own officers from blowing Alric up, Lennart thought, I’m catching the bullet for him, in effect.

If I have to have him killed, well, there it is. He’s set up me murdering one of my own officers- what a breach of the sense of community that holds us together.

If I manage to talk him down, then death might be just as certain, following prolonged legal dissection. An attempted assassination of a high official would have to go to court, probably with Adannan prosecuting.

Summary judgement wouldn’t rub enough salt in the wound, this would be done with the full travesty of the law. Adannan could use his authority to declare himself a superior court, but Lennart didn’t think he would. More fun this way. If they weren’t trying a cloud of vapour, that was.

‘I also have a plan to protect myself,’ Lennart continued, ‘that doesn’t involve measures quite this drastic.’ Which was a flat out lie, considering the fallback emergency plan of signalling Dynamic to open fire on the bridge tower.


‘Something’s wrong. Everything’s wrong, but something is very wrong.’ Mirhak-Ghulej said. ‘You’re not angry enough. Boom, and a big red smear all over your record. You’re not taking this seriously.’

‘I reckon you’re just about angry enough at the universe for both of us.’ Lennart said, quietly. ‘My career’s survived worse- and do you have any idea about the blast radius of that thing?’

He decided to be flippant about it. ‘If I do get vapourised I won't exactly be in shape to worry about it, so what the smenge.’

‘You’re just as bad.’ Mirhak-Ghulej screamed. ‘No respect for truth, stability, discipline. Neither do I anymore,’ he said, peculiarly- he so desperately wanted to be wrong. ‘It’s all fakery, it’s how they pirate us, steal us from our own selves.’

How much damage do I have to do to his self respect, Lennart wondered. A broken man with nothing left might just let that bomb go. As it possible to slingshot past this and build him back up again?


‘You’re really only just working this out? Only losing your political virginity now, of all times?’ he said.

‘Everyone else feels like this?’ Mirhak-Ghulej said. ‘Abandoned, betrayed, lied to?’

‘The situation’s the same.’ Lennart admitted. ‘How hard you take it depends on how much faith you had in your sociopolitical superiors to start with. You must have been much more confident in society than I ever was.’

‘But…’ Mirhak- Ghulej gestured upwards with the flamer. ‘He doesn’t shock you? You don’t find him an abomination?’

‘If I do, it’s not for the same reasons. And do remember who Kor Alric works for.’


A straight warning not to commit lese- majeste would lead Mirhak-Ghulej into direct insult. Lennart let that go for the moment, but added ‘And who you were supposed to be working for- which happens to be me.’

‘You cast me out!’ Mirhak-Ghulej shouted at him. ‘You led me on and you cast me out.’

‘I expected you to help my crew deal with the truth, not to ram the lie down their throats. You were committed, a true believer- that’s why you had so far to fall.’ Lennart said.

‘I thought at first you were playing the game in your own way, dealing with the truth, paying society it’s due and taking what you could get, but then you made it spectacularly obvious that you weren’t.’ Why are you dealing with, why are you trying to save this ridiculously broken man? The force whispered in his ear.

Because he’s my fault, at least in part. With more time, I could have fixed him. As it is, I wish the force really was like duct tape. Or I could do projective telepathy well enough to tell Gethrim to get ready with the ray shields.


‘This, though,’ Lennart continued out loud, ‘this is no solution, it’s the end of all potential, forfeit of any chance to make good what you’ve lost and make sense of what happened.’

‘I’m a lost cause.’ Mirhak-Ghulej wailed. ‘The jokes, the sneers, the slime, the hazing, an endless stream of little hateful things to mock a man who had nothing, only a con trick to live by. You kicked me when I was down, and I don’t want to live anymore.’

He was perilously close to pushing the button, Lennart realised, within one or two twists of the knife of wiping himself out.

What effect would shooting a thermal detonator with a blaster have? Set to stun? DEMP weapon? Much easier to shoot the man. From the strictly naval point of view, it didn’t really matter- he was unlikely to ever get it back together enough to be allowed to serve again, even if he wanted to.

The part about the black mark on his record was true enough, though not of overriding importance right now. The fact that it probably wasn’t going to work did. What the kriff kind of shape will he be in, even if I do pull him back from the brink? Lennart thought.


‘Look. Vasimir. I suppose you could call me a chaotic constructionist. I believe in making and building, in creation and growth, and I’ve been exceptionally lucky to find and keep a job that lets me commit so much high-yield violence in a good cause.

I don’t want to let you make a nothing of yourself. I had you sidelined because I wanted you to change and grow- I thought that anybody in your position with your record had to be doing more than hanging on by his fingernails, I didn’t realise how much support you needed. Neither did you.

He knows he got to you, he’s waiting for this, and I think he’s faster, and nastier, than you are. I don’t think you can kill him faster than he can kill you. Let someone he isn’t expecting, doing something he can’t foresee and hasn’t set up, take care of him. You might as well live for the time being.’

Mirhak-Ghulej seemed to be listening. Lennart continued ‘Come on. You’ve done enough, you’ve taken a stand, you’ve got this far. Let someone else help you and take it the rest of the way.’


This had not been a cry for help, he had intended to go through with it, but under the drained hope, not daring to express itself, that there might be a way back.

‘You’re serious? You promise?’ Mirhak-Ghulej said. Was it possible he was faking it? Nobody could sound that much like a five year old boy and mean it, not unless- well, he was too far gone to fake it. Probably was that damaged. This is the tipping point, Lennart thought.

Considering what I’m up against, considering what he did to you,’ Lennart stopped himself before he could say ‘Don’t worry, I’ll fix the bastard.’ He could. Had to.

Had every intention of doing so, for his own and the ship’s reasons, but to say so out loud would constitute an open, public-record declaration of feud against his constitutional superior and a man of some potency in the Force. Suicidally dangerous.

On the other hand, to claim he couldn’t do it- melting was not in the game plan, either.


Trying to talk to him at all was the high risk option, once begun no way back- this had to work. Make that promise and the response might just be ‘Let’s go do it now.’ Crap, I hated the dramatics society.

‘What can I do? He has his authority to use as a weapon, legal power and the power of the dark side, and no remorse at all for the damage he does. What can I, what can any ordinary man do in the face of that?’

The Givin’s face creased under the mask, as he realise that Lennart had accepted Adannan’s challenge on Adannan’s terms- it would take an extraordinary man, a wielder of the force.

For Mirhak-Ghulej, the tone was pitched perfectly, one of baffled, helpless anger, pitch perfect brick wall at the end of the line, because his carved bronze face wrinkled up, and he started to cry.

Lennart grabbed him and hugged him, as two of the scouts ran to snatch up the exec’s weapons and take them away.

‘I’ll find a way.’ Lennart whispered to him, and two more scouts came to take the shaking, drained body of the exec. ‘Take Commander Mirhak-Ghulej down to medical, tell them I said they were to help him.’


Lennart was almost sure he heard one of the scouts mutter ‘What, euthanasia?’ under his helmet, but now that the crisis was past, he had to rein in the flow of anger that followed it.

That Givin; how good he would look with that thing on his head smashed in, and twitching on the deck. I will not do it, Lennart told himself, I will not give him an excuse.

That and the thought occurred to him that Adannan had had the minion effectively staked out here, in order to give him an excuse, and he regarded his own people as sacrificable because he intended to replace them with better, chosen from his apprentice’s ship’s crew.

The journalists started towards him, but for once in their lives, self preservation over-rode the instinct to get the story at all costs. If they had tried shoving a microphone in his face at this point, he would have found out exactly what he could do with the dark side of the force.

They kept the camera on him, but had the sense not to say a word.


On the main bridge and back in the captain’s chair, in something more closely resembling uniform, Lennart first called up every display he could think of and sat drinking the information in.

This is what I am, he thought self- consciously, repeating it like a mantra. A naval officer, not a psychiatrist, not a paralegal force-fuelled vigilante, not, I hope, a monster, just the commander of a starship about to commit to battle.

Fuelling complete; one point four five billion tons on board. The other ships of the squadron, ready.
Everyone knew what had happened, knew he did not want to talk about it.


‘General announcement, all ships of the squadron;’ the com team set it up. More than a few of them were in dress uniform, it was going to be a big day, one way or the other. Even Lennart, although he still had the fuzzy feet on.

‘We have three, possibly four battles to fight. Our first target is Ord Corban. Long range scan indicates the rebels have taken the chance on a slow evacuation, taking as many machine tools as possible. This is what I wanted to happen.

Jump to a point off, bow-shock tactics, and RV with Dynamic and Hialaya Karu. Then Black Prince and the rest of the strike line, less Dynamic and Perseverance and plus Blackwood, will make a recon-in-force approach to the target.

If we are lucky enough to catch them at anchor, so much the better, but I expect a double or triple layer vectored ambush, they have a base station there after all, and intend a two or three phase entry.

I have confidence in my own ship’s ability to survive under fire, so Black Prince will enter first and relay navigation data back to the RV point.


Structure works for them, chaos works for us. I want a running, moving battle- the planet won’t go anywhere, so any damage doable to it in the initial stages is a bonus, but the prime target is rebel fleet assets. All the hyper capable fighters and small craft will be going in in the first wave also.

Open formation, open order, commit all combat small craft on entry, stand ready to receive tactical direction from your line leaders and the Flag.

First nav point and codes of the day downloading to you now, so, ladies and gentlemen, in the name of the peace of the galaxy and the glory of the empire, let us exercise our vocation and commit to battle.’

Turning to his navigator, Lennart said ‘Let’s go. No sense keeping destiny waiting.’

[declan]

Open formation, open order, commit all combat small craft on entry, stand ready to receive tactical direction from your line leaders and the Flag. First nav point and codes of the day downloading to you now, so, ladies and gentlemen, in the name of the peace of the galaxy and the glory of the empire, let us exercise our vocation and commit to battle.’
Turning to his navigator, Lennart said ‘Let’s go. No sense keeping destiny waiting.’

Nice chapter , I'm channeling the starblazers music with this last paragraph.

Declan

[frogcurry]

Nice end to a beautiful weekend, its a wonder with guys like that , that the rebels actually won.

Farmboys from Tatooine wanted to be soldiers for the rebel cause, even before the blow of Alderaan to imperial loyalty. Now that they aren't using clones, the entire fleet recruitment source will be contaminated by possible traitors and informers at all levels of ability. The Black Prince might be avoiding this with a lower crew turnover rate, lots of loyal stormies and greater control by its Captain over the selection of new crewmembers. Other ships probably aren't so lucky.

Still going good, keep it up please (and don't take up any distracting, time-intensive hobbies anytime soon).

[Vianca]

Say Remnant, will a Venator be added to 851-rod?
Will Mirannon use parts of it's design on the Black Prince?

ps: It could be part of his redesign of Black Prince's her nose section, which would lead to a bigger back end.
It's really a shame that we can't take a look at Mirannon's model or a pic of it.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

It's just as well Cdr Falldess has someone else to do target recognition and IFF for her;

Sweep line;
Voracious (Venator), Gp.Cpt K.Vehrec, SLt Caliphant
Obdurate (Demolisher med frigate), LCdr K.A. Raesene
Eludor, Nefarious (Servator heavy corvettes),
DSM- 395 “Revenge of the Planck-ton”, JHE-634 “Shooting Pains” Bayonet med corvettes,
AF-217ED “Counterparting is Such Sweet Sorrow”, ER-897JH “Spiral Eyes Joe”, VY-493LQ “We Distrain Upon You” Marauder light corvettes,
6 Rendili customs corvettes- CN27AJ19 “The Silent Bugler” (flotilla lead), SFA E.Rontaine, FL89IA12, BD10NJ30, Il45EB28, NE54OA98, RO72SJ65

That could have been an embarrassing mistake under combat conditions- "I didn't think we had one of those, shoot it."

If you're thinking of something left behind down on Ord Corban, it's unlikely. There will be extensive spare parts and part manufacturing facilities, workshops and dockyards, but any completed hulls would have been appropriated by criminals and rebels long ago.

Mirannon's redesign work is going very much the other way; if anything, he's cribbing elements from the Tector class, which has the advantage of being an Imperator variant to start with, fewer knock-on changes.
As a general note, changing an existing design this radically is not possible in 20th/21st century ships. Even if it was possible to dismember and reassemble a ship to a wildly altered specification, it wouldn't be cost effective. I'm assuming the Empire can do better than that.

One of the reasons the Venator class can afford that large a fighter complement is, simply, AT-ATs. They're huge. Useful, but add up storage and maintenance space, loading facilities, the room they take up in a dropship and how large the dropship hangar and maintenance facilities have to be, and the base-establishing and field engineering facilities- the opportunity cost paid for those abilities on the Imperator-class is at least another dozen squadrons.

With a radical revision in the dropship complement and reduction in the surface engineering assets- lose the raw materials- Black Prince manages to carry an additional six squadrons, and actually more walker and repulsor armour, at the price of accepting a very high degree of vulnerability in the dropships. Calculated risk.

I have an internal sketch of Black Prince, working out what's gone where, and I could do an external, but I'm scannerless. I'd need to find someone else to do that.

As far as the bow goes, any really heavy weapon mount, with high power drain and recoil, would be much safer and more reliable based on an existing hardpoint. If the starboard-side hull extension goes forward, then the bow tractor beam mounts would get plated over anyway, and what a waste that would be.
Currently, Lennart and Mirannon are thinking Imperator-I style twin heavy turrets, anywhere from three to six depending on availability. Probably not feasible to run the engines hot enough to power them simultaneously with the existing gun fit, but they would be able to fire 'down', under the belly of the ship, a useful additional capability.

This is all assuming that they come out in one piece, or at least few enough to collect them all up and put them back together again. Consider the opposition for a moment.
Lucrehulk. Twenty times the volume of an Imperator, at least eight to ten times the power output (wild ass guess). Flabby and inefficient, maybe- but a monster nonetheless.
Shockwave. Pretty much the upper end of destroyer classification, only barely not a cruiser. Five times the volume, three times the power output.
Reiver, the Imperator class destroyer that surrendered. Depending on what shape she's in, the rebels may be able to commit her too.
Planetary defence batteries. Lots of them.
Whatever the rebel regional support group sends to help cover the withdrawal. MC-80, probably.
Nothing necessarily stopping renegade elements of the sector group from trying again. 3.1-kilometre Urbanus class light cruiser flagship.

It would be a ridiculous violation of the laws of probability if any group of small ships could have that much fire thrown at them, and come out all standing.
Some has already been written, expect the next chapter with the battle of ord corban, or at least the first half of it, by next thursday or saturday.

Oh, yes, frogcurry; your handle is giving me the terrible temptation to write you in as a Mon Cal.

[Vianca]

It's just as well Cdr Falldess has someone else to do target recognition and IFF for her.

Well, hadn't read that far back and I couldn't remember one being part of 851-rod (and that crew member was still asleep).

Maybe something for a side project of Mirannon, designing a lenghted version of a Venator?
Could keep Caliphant's tech's bussy with something.

[Vehrec]

You should remember what I'm operating off of in the future. I at least am making an effort to remember the major elements of our fleet.

I presume that we will be trying to lure the enemy out one at a time to exposed positions, as well as trying to alpha strike them before they can hit battlestations when we arrive?

[Vianca]

You should remember what I'm operating off of in the future. I at least am making an effort to remember the major elements of our fleet.

I presume that we will be trying to lure the enemy out one at a time to exposed positions, as well as trying to alpha strike them before they can hit battlestations when we arrive?

Think you should also ad to that gues that they will probably try to keep the shipbuilding constructions intact as long as possible.
They might need them for fleet repair.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Because of the need to move out at shortest possible notice, there hasn't been in-universe time to hold a full round table discussion of the plan. There would have been a tactical appreciation issued- under Lennart's name but in practise mostly written by Wathavrah and Rythanor, but no time to dissect it.

Essentially, Vehrec, you're right. With a couple of minor twists, one of them being that Lennart expects to have to play hyperspace leapfrog.
Safer to meet the rebel warship away from the cover of their fixed planetary guns. Move in, alpha- strike the fixed defences from range and encourage the rebels to jump out to meet him, and units of the squadron will be brought in to ambush them in turn.

Black Prince is going to be the only destroyer committed in the first wave, though. As such, she's the obvious primary target. What the tactical circular would read like Lennart intends is to encourage them to target- fixate on him, pursue and engage his destroyer at the expense of leaving themselves open to attack by the rest of the squadron. Interesting move, for an Imperial flagship.


Remember the computing power available; can you think of any reason why the Venator project team at KDY wouldn't have, say, two or three hundred less optimal alternative designs considered for the initial build, continuous consideration and re-evaluation of the design throughout the clone wars as combat experience added up, and at least that many designs prepared for postwar refit, life extension and subsequent variant programs? Chances are, the work's already been done.

No evidence that any hull metal was ever cut as a result, though. Looking at that huge forward hull void, I can see why- one idea comes instantly to mind, but it'd require an entirely different forward half of the ship. Torpedo destroyer. Same shape to look at, bracing and baffles and blast channelers protecting magazines and accelerator launchers- you could fit a lot of missiles into a ship like that. The thing would probably end up looking like a peculiarly shaped pepperpot, so many launch tubes. On the other hand, a design already well known for being below average in structural strength- with so much ordnance on board, there's an obvious survivability issue.

The other thing I can think of straight away is stripping out most of the fighter and drop troop bays for additional tankage. LRE conversion. Thing'd probably handle like a brick, but compare the existing fuel silo volume to the fighter bay- you could get a lot more range out of that. Intergalactic range, maybe? There aren't many Venators in evidence by the time of the galactic civil war, after all...

Not being entirely serious, but consider this also, an interesting dilemma; take the place with it's computers at least intact, and they have a nice mountain of incriminating evidence. On the other hand, do that and Adannan is likely to get what he wants. Again, assuming either of them survive.

[Vianca]

Not being entirely serious, but consider this also, an interesting dilemma; take the place with it's computers at least intact, and they have a nice mountain of incriminating evidence. On the other hand, do that and Adannan is likely to get what he wants. Again, assuming either of them survive.

Well, what do you know (picture a stormtrooper looking at the computer terminal while deleting stuff).
Seems like the rebels are trying to purge things with a virus.
Lets put a halt to it (stormtrooper insert's a disk filed with virus and anti-virus programs).

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

If only it was that easy. Lennart's problem here is that he has the force, and that he's being blackmailed with it. The Inquisitorius know that Lennart has potential, remember; Adannan intercepted that information and chose to abuse it for his personal gain.
The only way for that status to go away, for him to be not a potential dark jedi, is for someone, oh, let's say a special agent of the privy council, to sign off on the 'fact'. That's Adannan's carrot. And there's blackmail potential in there as well.
They are fencing, something helped by that Adannan is not a fencer by temperament, and Lennart, arguably, is; but Adannan's position is inherently stronger, and although he has won a couple of rounds, there is a lot more to do.

Oh, one other minor point; Yod. The tenth letter of the hebrew alphabet, Greek has been done to death so why not?
I initially plucked this out of thin air, but later, adding it up, realised that if you count the light cruiser flagship as zero, Black Prince is in fact the tenth ship on the order of battle of Fleet Destroyer Squadron 851. So it fits, more or less.

Anyway, this battle is definitely going to be a multi-parter. Phase One.



The jump to the rendesvous point went off without a hitch. After disengaging from the tanker, Black Prince had gone to battle stations essentially of the crew’s own accord, most of the rest of the squadron did so on arrival.

The course was a straightforward zigzag, to a light-year out and on the axis of rotation of the star, the system laid out in plan view below them.

Dynamic and Hialaya Karu were there already, drifting and waiting. Lennart ordered the squadron to assemble on him, in the wave formation he had chosen.

First wave Black Prince and the fastest ships of the group, and their supraluminal small craft, shuttles and transports mainly, the shuttles with pivot and turret guns, the transports with ion guns and torpedoes.

Voracious started loosing her complement of Avenger and Assault TIEs, and older types they had booster rings for, the Actis and Nimbus, to join them.

That should give us starfighter superiority from the start, and a decent antiship punch to follow that in, Lennart thought- that had been the point of the plan.


After that, who? My working assumption is that they will be caught out initially but react quickly, and microjump or jump out and return, attempting to gain a killing position on Black Prince.

The second wave exists to exploit that, jumping in to kill them while the flag leads them away. Most of the squadron should be second wave, but it was going to be a running, manoeuvring fight for the most part.

The ships that couldn’t coordinate their actions well enough to perform effectively under those circumstances, or were physically incapable of the necessary acceleration, would have to form a third wave- jumping in when the fight had taken on more definite shape.

He com’d Falldess on the Karu class destroyer. ‘Any problems?’


‘The, ah, the local crew were unwilling to part with her. I had to use Kor Alric’s authority to pry her loose.’ Falldess said.

‘There’s more to it than that, isn’t there?’ Lennart asked.

‘Yes.’ She admitted, wondering if she was going to make the situation worse for the local crew. ‘Commander Carcovaan was very disturbed by the thought that he was going to miss his chance to make a name for himself and his crew.’

‘Disturbed how?’ Lennart asked.

‘Initially, almost in tears.’

‘If he took it that hard…’ Lennart said disapprovingly, thinking Destiny, send me hard-nosed bastards who can carve their own way, whose hands I don’t have to hold, because I don’t know how much more of that I can do without snapping and ripping somebody’s head off. Although, bearing Kor Alric in mind, not too many.


‘At first, when it was just a shock. Then I thought he was going to murder me to get his ship back. When I showed him Kor Alric’s authorisation, he sort of crumpled, but then dealt with it professionally enough.’ Falldess said.

Carcovaan had been left out of the initial squadron lineup largely because of his ship. The slowest accelerating craft Lennart had been prepared to accept in the initial lineup had been the 2,680 ‘g’ Demolishers.

Karu class, although they had many other good qualities, were not fast. She and Dynamic would form the bulk of the third wave, Fist, Voracious and Perseverance the second.

The other reason was that Carcovaan had few negatives, but also few positives. He was average, maybe above average, but had never had, worse had never sought hard enough to find, the chance to distinguish himself. Maybe he would, if the chance managed to find him.


What else was there, in terms of unfinished business? Too many enemies- including the most personal of all, who mercifully had had the sense to keep out of the way.

That was unusually tactful of Kor Alric, who must have been aware that the crew of the destroyer loathed him. Lennart was expecting a sly little probing call, another aggravation, which probably would have been enough to set him off.

The timing was wrong, though. Right now, it would suit Adannan to have Lennart unbothered, and at peak efficiency to defeat the rebels and carve their way through to Ord Corban.

‘Skipper? We have a problem. Kind of weird.’ Cormall, who looked fantastically out of place in full dress uniform.

‘Weird. Around here that could be anything, but- Nygma?’ He was about due to cause trouble.


‘I think so. Being as how we’re dealing with a master of deception and confusion, I could be wrong.’ Cormall said, but from his tone it was clear it was so unlikely it could only be the rogue analyst.

‘Sir, I’ve been using all the run time the ship had to spare, I’ve got better tools to work with, I thought I had a break into one of his data-dump accounts and tried tracing back from there. I had the brute force to cut through a lot of the clever puzzles he left, but-‘

‘That’s a lot of excuses for a mistake you haven’t told me you’ve made yet.’ Lennart interrupted.

‘Sorry, Sir, but- have you ever walked into an invisible house of mirrors? There are multiple feeds out. Each of them with feedback, and carrying data close to the limit of the human brain to assimilate, so suddenly I have forty-plus primary targets.

I don’t understand how he can be in that many places at once. Either he’s single handedly invented a new stardrive with journey times in nanoseconds per light year, or-‘

Both of them said at the same time, ‘He’s gone massively parallel.’


‘Ah, dreck.’ Cormall added.

‘Contact them. Contact them all.’ Lennart said.

The chief petty officer did; the holodisplay filled with changing mathematical symbols, a strange pseudo-equation of dancing randomised nearly- logic. All with little green hats.

‘Doctor Nygma?’ Lennart said, dreading the answer.

‘Yes.’ All of them said, in quadrodecaphonic sound.

‘The conclusion you expect me to come to as a result of this display- you have, haven’t you?’


All the mathematical symbols looked shiftily at each other. A lemma picked a fight with a theorem, and the set of all sets that include themselves decided to blackball one of it’s members, just to see what happened.

‘Yes.’ ‘No.’ ‘Conceivably.’ ‘Indeterminately.’ ‘Stochastically.’ ‘Suppose that I are not confused…’

‘Next question.’ Lennart said, carrying straight on. ‘Did you think this was actually necessary, or just too much fun not to do?’

Again a scattershot of random, nonsensical, head-bending answers, which Lennart guessed distilled down to ‘A bit of both.’


‘You do realise,’ Lennart said, and stopped himself before he could ask the open- ended question “what the consequences of this are going to be” the answer to which could have gone on forever, ‘what you have to do now? Survive, and bear witness?’

‘Some of us are not carnivorous. We want to marrow witness instead.’ The one nearest the front said.

‘Fine.’ Lennart said, determinedly ignoring the discussion of the theory and iconography of the cybervegetable that started up in the lower half of the holotank. ‘We found you, but…you know your own trade best, I’m sure. Good luck.’

He broke the connection.


‘Kriff me sideways with a zombie rancor. How did that happen?’ Cormall asked.

‘I wouldn’t say that in earshot of anyone from Engineering if I were you- and I should be asking you that anyway.’ Lennart said. ‘He must have created an emulation of his own mind, and spread it throughout the sector HoloNet.

With all the classified data in his brain- Black Sun might not have the skill to track all of him down, but the Ubiqtorate are going to kill him. I hope we haven’t just given memory room to one- or several- of him?’

Sir, I don’t think so, but I could be wrong.’ Cormall said, honestly.


‘Glorious. Well, don’t let him, or them, interfere with ship systems.’

‘Aye, aye, Sir.’ Cormall said, but Lennart’s mind was already moving to the next problem. Something he had failed to do consciously and explicitly, worse, something he had been particularly insistent on in the exercises- enemy intentions analysis.


In the rebels’ position, he would be sending out whatever he could spare to launch spoiling attacks, scattershot across the sector. There would be plenty of targets, too soft or too confused to resist effectively.

Even strikes that failed would achieve something strategically, spreading confusion and helping to cover the evacuation.

The fact that they hadn’t indicated that they were going down the other route, making one big fight out of it. That was why he had requested support from 851. They could do hunter operations throughout the sector, or reinforce the pursuit squadron at Ord Corban.


Most of the unplanned acquisitions, the remains of Third Superiority Fleet, would attack as part of wave three. HIMS Fist had the acceleration to form part of the first wave, but he wanted her as one of the key pieces of the second.

The holes had been crudely plated over- the welding was still glowing hot, but the repair job should be robust enough to stand having a shield spread over it, hopefully.

The other reason that with the loss of most of primary sensor function and thirty percent of the EW emitters, she was less fit to fight a high speed, long range running battle, so phase two it would be.

As an academy tutor, I would mark this plan down on several grounds, Lennart thought, one of them being violation of unit integrity.

I had intended to work up to efficiency and deploy in that standard pattern formation, now I’m winging it, he thought. With one more line and one more light destroyer than I had expected, so it’s not all bad.

With a little bit of retroactive polish, this might almost look like I planned it.


Group Captain Vehrec was one of the last out of the old Venator’s fighter complement, he was still trying to make sense of the deployment plan.

Caliphant was with him on the bridge, and said ‘Well, you should be happy with the battle plan. Especially the bit that says ‘and then we make it up as we go along.’’

‘Yes, it does.’ Vehrec said, looking down at the datapad in hand.

‘We were lucky in that last fight. We were just a big dumb ox, trying to squash the enemy with dead weight. The crew are happy about it, I’m happy about it, but we were slow and we fumbled a lot.

I should be bouncing of the ceiling here; guns and glory, yee-hah, woohoo, all that, going around and telling everyone how wonderful they are. Instead-‘ Caliphant said.


‘You’re worrying too much. When the shot starts to fly, they’ll shake out. They’re a bit overconfident now, if you can calm them down without going too far the other way it would be good, but they’ll do.’

‘What I am concerned about,’ Vehrec continued, ‘is the booster rings.’

‘The what? You’re serious.’

‘Of course. Look, we hyperspace in, eleven squadrons, and ditch six squadrons’ worth of booster rings- they haven’t been in production for fifteen years, there are damn few left to turn up. As soon as you come in in wave two, get the retrieval tugs and tenders out.’


‘We’re making a combat drop, we’re going to be…oh. I see where you’re coming from there. Right, can do.’ Caliphant said. Worrying about an absurd little thing like that, at a time like that, would be a good way to get the crew indulging in some nice, comforting, stabilising, panic- preventing routine.

‘Good.’ Was all Vehrec said. He was thinking, Antar Olleyri may have the rank, but I’ll be the man on the spot.

With thirty-plus transports and as many again armed shuttles on top of the wing, that’s upwards of a thousand antiship torpedoes, and the combined energy firepower alone reaches the low gigatons; hitting secondary targets is going to be fun.


Lineup complete, and move in from assembly area to the target.

The rebels could hardly fail to notice the shoal of hyperdrive signatures coming their way, but they could be prevented from doing so until it was too late.

Primary entry point was just above the ecliptic and to sunward, a quarter AU off the mainworld. One hundred and twenty-four light seconds- less time than it took to raise a shield.

Black Prince, the elements of the strike line committed and the shoal of fighters and armed transports emerged as planned, in a system full of energy and drive flares. The rebs were still here, and they were busy.

The Actis and Nimbus squadrons ditched their drive rings, fanned out, Black Prince went on to a standard shallow evasive weave while gunnery picked the first target of the day.

EW was already registering panic, confused crosstalk on rebel command wavebands; no time for code cracking yet, but traffic analysis indicated near panic. Possibly simulated, could have been an ambush- if it was, their own side were in ignorance of it.

Too many lower echelon units trying to contact higher, too many people talking at once. It was chaotic enough to escape stylisation. All recorded for subsequent analysis, of course.


The outworlds, their defences were already partially disassembled for relocation. Relatively easy meat. A few salvos in their direction might arrive before they had time to raise a full shield- LTL fire crackled out at the nearest outworld and the asteroid stations.

Some small ships out there, freighters and transports, escort corvettes- the smaller ships of the squadron could be detached to deal with them, and lay siege to the outworlds.

Would that draw the rebel heavies in their direction? Lennart hoped so, knew that his own nav team would be plotting microjumps out there as a matter of routine.

Of the three primary targets, the two large rebel ships and the main world itself, One and Indivisible- the Lucrehulk- was in orbit- no, actually anchored to a skyhook.

As conversions, and huge ships with a lot of space to play with, there were so many variants- scan called this one a late model combat carrier.

Fairly impressive; a worthwhile target. Her powerplant was spiking as she ran up to full output, very fast reactions over there. One to watch. The skyhook, though, was inherently more vulnerable.


This would be the first test in combat of the new axial battery; the structure was there to take the load, the field generators were all in place and functioning, but it was still fresh pants on standby status.

The Lucrehulk would manage partial shielding before the ship’s fire could reach her, the hook wouldn’t. Overkill time- the three huge four hundred and eighty teraton guns cracked out one shot each, everyone involved with their fingers crossed.

The ship shook, and one of the displays flickered, but a sequence of three forest green tracer lashed out downrange.


‘Good. Roll us to bear, main guns single shot and target match your yields, LTL change target, mainworld, priorities for both shield generators, ion cannon, light turbolasers, heavy turbolasers in that order.’

The object was to render the planet vulnerable and exposed to further attack. Killing the light turbolasers before the heavies- Lennart had faith in his own ship’s footwork, they could evade enough of the main defence batteries’ fire, but the smaller craft he was less sure of.

Heavy axials, your target is the One and Indivisible,’ Lennart stopped before he could give a fire order. The thing was just sitting there.

Playing chicken, to all intents and purposes. If the Empire wanted the planet intact, he couldn’t afford to go around making half-petaton holes in the landscape- bold to the point of insanity. ‘Shoot once it has cleared the silhouette of the planet.’

The gunnery liaison on the bridge parsed that into an order, transmitted it.


Black Prince turned to bear, and sprayed out shot after shot- a sparkling green bridge of tracer extending towards the planet.

Bridge? Too friendly, insufficiently aggressive an image. Then again, hadn’t that been part of very early artillery terminology? Being ‘shot into’ a position, on a pont au feu- a bridge of fire to get the men over the obstacles. That fitted.

Hyperspace scanners picked up the first return fire coming their way. Predicted endpoints- all around them. A loose barrage-cone, the rebels’ best chance to score some hits. Black Prince could take what was coming, but it was beyond the surge capacity of the frigates, beyond the total load of the corvettes.

Another good reason to detach them to pursue a secondary target.

‘Blackwood, you’re subformation leader. Hit planet III, maximum burn out of the cone of incoming fire then dogleg. Their smaller craft, and that could be anything up to line destroyer, will probably bounce you. Be ready.’


To Brenn, he added ‘Set up a nav solution for wave two, running update- use Blackwood’s location as the end point, double usual safety offset.’ The fighter wing bridge liaison was instructed ‘Pattern Delta, variant three. Target mainworld.’

That was an essentially cylinder-shaped attack, the fighter wing fanning out to avoid fire directed at the ship and moving forward to englobe the target. Variant three was to lead with the fighters, bombers relatively close behind, to draw defending fighters out and destroy them.

They would be striking at the same targets the main batteries were; Lennart expected to have to pull his guns off the planet and engage warship targets well before they got there.


He accelerated Black Prince outsystem at a tangent to the planet, passing out of as much of the cone of fire as possible and rolling to keep the fire arc open.

Shielding down there was starting to come on line, but it would not have built up to full strength, nothing like. Possibly enough to stop light turbolaser fire, though.

‘LTL, change target, One and Indivisible. He’s inviting us in, he’s refusing to come out and fight. He knows that we have him in a foul position. He’ll raise shields and shelter under the planetary defence until something happens to distract us.

Could be worth a fighter strike- thinking of that, helm, sell them a dummy, down twenty starboard thirty, hold that for eight seconds then resume normal evasion. These fabian tactics begin to irritate me.’ Lennart said.


‘Could they be doing something as simple as waiting for orders?’ Brenn speculated. ‘Command absent or dithering, so the bridge team spool the ship up fast but there’s no-one with the authority to actually take her out to fight?’

‘Tempting, but a damn’ dangerous assumption to base our approach on. Guns, hold fire on her now, keep stripping away the planetary defences, and let’s see how she reacts to having the skyhook shot out from under her.’ Lennart decided.


‘First of our shot will hit in three seconds.’ Rythanor announced. ‘Looks good.’

Hyperwave scanners, instantly responsive, registered the impact of the first shots two minutes before the light could reach them. From that account, it was going to be a hell of a fireworks show.

The skyhook had managed to raise partial shielding, which had been a mistake- it meant that it absorbed all three half- petaton hits and erupted along the upper two thirds of it’s length.

The planet itself- there were gaps in the defence net anyway, things removed and sold off long ago, torn down by the rebels to relocate to other bases; time to a firing position where they could hit the Lucrehulk without turning the planet behind it into a cinder from near misses and overpenetrations?

Time to exploit those gaps, burn them large enough to go in after it? It was a ridiculously large piece of live bait, after all. Lennart wanted to tear the holes in the planetary defence net open wide enough to force the rebs to come out to meet him, not to go in and get shredded by what there was left of it.


Rythanor turned round to report, saw the captain was looking intent over his shoulder and was aware of it anyway. Ion drive flares; One and Indivisible was moving at last.

One hundred and thirty seconds from anchored and taking on freight to clearing the dockside? Helped slightly by the fact that the dockside had ceased to exist, of course.

‘Guns, port- no, Starboard-2 switch to flak bursts, lay a shot on it every twenty seconds.’ Probably not enough to stop it trying to launch fighters, as a continual blizzard of explosions would have, but enough to cook a lot of them.

The first shots from the planetary defence guns were starting to arrive, now. If the spreading stream of fire from Black Prince was a bridge, the converging effect of the defence batteries was a sandstorm of red and orange.

The light guns had reacted fastest, but it was near the limit of effective range for dual purpose turbolasers firing from or through an atmosphere.

Good enough for their light guns to hit fighters, though, one reason Lennart had got his away so quickly, and good enough for his to do counterbattery on their light guns.


The heavies were pounding the planet as well, and scoring hits; there were four iridescent purple- blue mushroom shaped explosions where nodes of the shield network had been destroyed
.
Not mushroom clouds, they were inevitable and there would be enough of those later anyway, but as the shield generators were hit and destroyed, that release of energy came flooding out of the partially spread surface of the shield bubble.

Damn the force for it’s inconvenience, Lennart thought, I think I can actually hear the planet screaming. Not the rebels, the world itself.

If it was, small wonder. Even on a precisely targeted fire plan- and the gun crews were doing a superb job- there were still hundreds of teratons a minute being pounded into Ord Corban.

It would be another hundred seconds before it became clear to the telescopic eye, but the hyperwave could detect and the ship’s computers infer from that what was happening.

The planet’s surface would be rippling, earthquake after earthquake, some of them the small and local concussions of TL hits, but at least two triggered fault lines.

The green flowers of impact would become less and less clear through a grey-brown haze of dust and atmospheric ejecta. The oceans wouldn’t have started boiling off, not yet. A few more petatons for that.


And this was an aimed, necessary-force fire plan, against legitimate military targets.

The destruction of which was, in itself, a visual spectacle worth paying attention to. The green flare was followed by a white aftershock of the target detonating, which faded to a white-hot molten glow surrounded by a literal ring of fire, once the radiation intensities from the hit faded to a temperature at which chemistry was possible.

Whatever they hit, if it didn’t burn, it was vapourised down to it’s constituent elements, and then the vapour burned.

The planet’s atmosphere would be absolutely foul, but the planetary facilities would survive a near miss, or this kind of punishment to the world around them. There would be enough left to drop troops on, when it came to that.


‘We’re doing too well, we shouldn’t be doing this much damage, this soon.’ Lennart said, hauling himself back from sightseeing mode to the situation at hand.

‘We’re beyond normal effective aimed fire range. By the book they would have expected us to manoeuvre closer, before springing any ambush.’ Brenn pointed out.

In theory, aim a jump far enough outsystem to avoid giving warning from bow shock, and the normal- space emissions would give you away anyway.

Arrive close enough to have no realspace warning, and anyone worth the effort of attacking would have sensors to spot the bow shock and have shields and weapons up and ready.

The solution was a radically irregular hyperspace path in, waving your course track across the sky drastically enough to give warning to everyone but the target.

It placed a lot of stress on the ship, another reason why wave one had been the high- acceleration ships, they were built to withstand that kind of punishment.


‘Emerging this far away to draw them out, then jumping something in planetward for hammer and anvil, out here where we have room to fight? The problem with inflicting confusion on the enemy,’ Lennart said in his lecturing voice, for the benefit of the bridge crew,

‘is it makes the part of your own plan where you have to predict what the enemy thinks they’re trying to do into a cast-durelium bitch…is that the first of the heavy shot coming our way now?’

‘Yes, Captain.’ Rythanor confirmed.

The incoming fire display showed the light guns sending wavering streams of tracer, hosing on and off target, but the first of the multi-teraton defence batteries, slower to get into action, just getting their bolts out to them now.

Black Prince was in the fringes of the shot pattern, evading from entry proving valuable after all.

‘Helm, we’ll take this clump of shot bows on,’ Lennart drew a highlight around one cluster of bolts, ‘then I want a base course track like this.’ Tracing it on the display, the computer taking account of the ship’s velocity and delta-V, adjusting it back towards the possible.


Not that it needed much in the way of revision, it was a feasible, arguably necessary move. Ride out the first close smear of shot then break outwards to the edge of the barrage pattern, and spiral inwards around it towards the planet.

Subject, of course, to modifications. Once they realised the blind barrage was largely ineffectual, the rebels, such of them as were left, would start playing the great old gunnery guessing game.

Predicting his location on the basis of his intentions, and firing concentrated salvos at that point, as he tried to guess where they would fire and be anything but there. Lennart had lost rounds, even sets, but never the game. Not yet.

‘I suppose it’s possible that this might hurt…’ Lennart said, again for the benefit of the bridge crew. ‘Deflectors eighty forward.’ The shields shifted to meet the attack as the first rebel heavy shot rolled in.

Planetary defence came in many forms, most of them driven far more by politics and the contrary forces of penny-pinching and paranoia than any real need or rational threat analysis.

Virtually every civilised world worthy of the name had shields that could take a stray burst from freighter and liner ion drives, which would do to withstand LTL if it came to that.

Above that, the sky was the limit, up to and including ultraheavy shielding like Alderaan’s, which was designed to survive the heaviest attack anyone thought feasible, a battle squadron of ten Mandator dreadnoughts unloading on it at full power for ten hours. Correction; had been designed.


Defensive firepower was much more variable. A former fleet base would have been designed to be a match for the heaviest ships it was intended to protect. That would have been, in theory, a medium cruiser.

Sixteen batteries, common buried command centre and dispersed, robust sensors serving three ball- turret four hundred teraton heavy turbolasers, spaced twenty to forty kilometres apart with point defence around each. Being a planet, half of those could bear on any given target.

Twenty array batteries, each of twelve forty- teraton heavy turbolasers, again, half of which could bear.

Lennart wasn’t worried too much about the forties. His ship could take that, had done so before; it would take a lot of concentrated hits to get through the shielding. The four hundreds could prove a problem.

The first splash of fire burnt through the space around his ship; two small twitches, concussions as one shot hit on the port side of the superstructure, one aft and starboard.

Not bad shooting, but not a problem yet.


If they couldn’t put enough fire from those things into Black Prince at this range fast enough to overload the shields, and unless Lennart was spectacularly stupid and allowed his ship to be hit they couldn’t, then they had to either move the planet to him- which was not entirely ridiculous but certainly beyond the means of the rebellion- or get him to come closer.

Which he would have thought One and Indivisible was doing, but for the absurdity of being prepared to sacrifice a medium cruiser to kill a destroyer. They had to hope for extraordinary luck with the bigger guns, or they had to come out to meet him.

And damn the force again, for trying to think of ways it could make itself useful. Although to call the jedi to mind, not many of them would have said what amounted to ‘neener neener neener’, even if projective telepathy did work that way.


‘Fighters coming up, lining up to microjump out to us, five or six squadrons, exit point- hmph.’ Rythanor gave a little grunt of amusement as he marked their point of emergence on the main tactical map. Predicted position from where Black Prince had been two hundred seconds ago- right in the middle of the cone of fire.

‘So there were failures of coordination on the rebel side from the word go.’ Lennart said, thinking about it. ‘let the fighters emerge, let them take losses, then pull the LTL on to them once they’ve managed to form up and made themselves a nice compact target again.’

Gunnery acknowledged, then there was a kick on the port side over the extension. One of the four- hundreds had got lucky. No penetration, no bleed through, a lot of heat to be got rid of.


If they had made the standard approach to an undistinguished planet, that the standard defence setup was intended to face, they would have come out at one light second.

That was close enough to the planet that bow shock would have given the defenders enough warning to raise theatre shields and arm guns. Then they would have commenced a fairly predictable run in, straight and level to release fighters and dropships.

A well drilled defence force could have managed an eighty plus percent hit rate under those conditions, and a standard Imperator class destroyer would have been lucky to last twenty seconds.

Against Third Superiority, they must have been either very startled, so much so they only got a few batteries into action, not possible considering the ambush, or they had actually been shooting to cripple and capture.

Fist had been truly fortunate to make it out. Either that or Tevar was better at the footwork than she realised. There was some revenge to be had there, too; how soon to bring them in?

Assume the rebel trap had already failed, bring the entire squadron in to pound the planet? Rely on 851 as backup to cover what else may happen?


Peltast, Daring, Speaker, Varangian and Tigress were within reach. Tector, Allegiance, Imperator-II, Venator, Imperator-I in that order. A lot of firepower, and a lot of men hungry for action and advancement too.

Arguably, he was letting his own squadron down by failing to secure as much of the glory was possible for them. Although that was more like counting reptavians before they hatch.

Careful, he warned himself. If they’re trying to lure me into a false sense of security in turn, then they could be doing a much worse job. And absolutely, above all, ignore that surge of triumphalism that came from the dark side.

Black Prince was in what her helm control team unofficially called reluctant film star mode; an unrolling red carpet spread out beneath her, which she was doing everything possible to avoid having to walk down.

The heavies were a deeper, more crimson red, beautiful in it’s own terrifying way. Looking ahead, down the hyperwave’s advance scan, the focus of fire wobbled, billowed, narrowed and darted to one side- that was the dummy, and it took them well clear.


Too much shot in the air to evade on an individual basis, and even their ‘towed array’- the hyperspace orbiting scanner- was now coming close to being washed out- part of that was jamming, too.

Relatively light fire pattern, starting to slacken considering so many of the defences had been hit, but- what was their jamming intended to achieve? Especially timed to coincide with…

‘Helm, take us across this track here.’ Back into the fire, skimming the edges of the concentrated stream.
Brenn looked at him, Lennart could hear the wheels of his mind turn, then he said ‘You really think they’re that good?’

‘Well, it’s about time they showed some evidence of competence.’

The destroyer curved back along the column of crimson and scarlet, five red flowers on the outer hull of bolt impacts being partially deflected, four forties and a four hundred. Painful, but compared to what they had already dealt out, trivial.

Lennart glanced at the shield status board; ray shields had equalised from the forward- heavy setup, back to a more even, and more tactically appropriate, spread. Good. That was what he had been about to order, anyway.


This was what it was all about, the intelligent anticipation, everyone knowing their part and able to count on each other to do theirs in turn, the collective machine, the finely honed skill that made the ship what it was.

In fact, right now the least trustworthy part of the system was himself. Was there any possibility the force was leading him into error? That he was overestimating his opponent, or just plain wrong?

It was certainly possible that he could waste enough time second- guessing himself enough to put the ship in danger.

An entire planet is shooting at me, Lennart thought, and I’m wondering where the nearest psychiatrist’s couch is. Well, it’s not as if they’re doing a particularly good job of it.

The superluminal sensor picture was blurring and clearing, fading in and out as the control team gained and lost ground against the planetary ECM. Lennart turned to look at the gunnery liaison, said ‘Do something about that, would you?’

Gunnery were already bumping up the planet’s antenna grids on the target priority list, before he had finished saying it.


Lennart had been a passenger on board ‘The Old Warhorse’- HIMS Guarlara- transferring from one staff command to another once, eighteen years ago, and it had been one of the eeriest experiences of his life.

Utter, total, absolute silence on the bridge. A look, a gesture, a nod, a raised eyebrow- attention was drawn and orders were given without a single word being spoken. The bridge team had been drilled that well, knew each others’ minds that thoroughly.

It had been an inspiration, but to try to follow that example would have led Lennart right back to the psychiatrist’s couch.

Kriff, it had taken him years to get his crew to the opposite state, where he could say something that imprecise and they could extract his intention from it, and use their own judgement as to how to implement it.

‘Skipper, One and Indivisible is warming up her hyperdrive.’ Cormall reported, in one of the moments of clarity.


‘What does Blackwood’s sensor picture look like?’ Lennart asked.

‘She’s in the fringes of the cone of jamming as well, doesn’t have our power, they are, wait, tentative contacts, bowshock focused on them, multiple, probable frigate class. We show two.’ Rythanor reported from the master station.

‘Brenn, nav course to support Blackwood?’ Lennart asked. This would have to be done fast, more shell game than leapfrog.

‘We jump to support them against this pair, One and Indivisible jumps us, that’s their plan?’
‘I do believe so.’ Lennart said. No, wait, plan B. The bridge team saw him thinking. ‘Do you have a course set for Ord Corban?’

‘Place the endpoint.’ Brenn said, calling it up.

Lennart dotted the pointer in place, on the night side where their vector would carry them on past the world, a crossing target. ‘Initiate.’

Black Prince leapt into hyperspace again, a short hop- now this was what you could call ripping the tiger’s tonsils out.

“Gravity well” was an inherently fuzzy concept. “Inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them”- there was no edge and no end.

Practically speaking, what mattered was the ability of the ship’s tensor and stasis fields to overcome the stress that accelerating tachyonically under tidal pull placed on the ship.


This was going to be rough. Fun, but rough. Black Prince plunged deeper into the system’s gravity well- a huge number of prayers suddenly offered up to deities of excrement and durasteel- emerged, a sprawling, off centre blue-white flare, a mere two planetary diameters from Ord Corban.

Less journey time than it took a rebel signal- interpreter to boggle at her board and yell ‘What in the name of the force are they doing?’

‘Guns…’Lennart said, watching the main sensor board pull itself back together. That had been the point of the exercise. Clear line of sight to One and Indivisible.

The Lucrehulk’s entire underside was a mix of half- molten and carbon black where the skyhook had gone up, a few patches where local shields had been active and had held. That would soon change.

‘…converged sheaf, my mark. Fire.’


Over the engine bells. One time- on- target hammerblow, a single three thousand, four hundred and eighty-eight teraton strike. The rebel ship’s shield took the first impact, but there were power surges through it’s hull as it strained to do so.

Helm slid Black Prince away from the inevitable rebel reaction as the planetary defence batteries reoriented themselves, sideslipping and counter-rolling to maintain alpha.

The second full converged salvo burned into the same shield panel, and while the generators tried to mutually reinforce each other, tried to share the load, they failed.

That was beyond even single shot battleship firepower, it was beyond the usual simultaneous- impact fire of any line or light destroyer, it was enough to cause an electrical explosion that ripped plating off the aft of the ship and a trail of burnt, ionising air and vapour.


‘Captain, Blackwood wants Voracious’ wingco shot and tried in that order. Says he’s opened fire on him.’ Rythanor reported.

Lennart glanced at the main board; there were indeed torpedoes in the air, heading in the rough general direction of the light forces wave one. ‘Most of the fighters following him are ours, trust them.’ Lennart said.

The third salvo- a little longer to charge- crashed out. One and Indivisible was in the middle of her run to hyperspace entry; under tachyonic drive, main engines no longer essential. Which was just as well, considering two of them were destroyed by the impact of the green wall of bolts.

Four impacts on Black Prince’s belly, three forties and a four hundred. They were close enough to the planet for proper aimed fire- in both directions; Lennart looked to helm and nodded. They flared the engines, surge forwards and roll port, reverse roll and spin port to maintain bearing, yaw on to target.


The planet was a mess. At this range, it was possible to see what a disaster they had made of it, there would be no-one going for R&R on those beaches for a long, long time.

It was, however, still more or less functional as a military base, and even if it could no longer properly defend itself, it could try to take them with it.

Run the rope out as far as they could, get some fire in, then move clear before the planetary defence started lobbing eight petaton converged sheaves back at Black Prince.

‘Skipper, what about-‘ Rythanor said, again; Lennart knew the sensor board was about to provide it’s own answer.

One and Indivisible made a clumsy exit from hyperspace, in ambush position on a ship that wasn’t there any more, ready to support the emerging Munificent- class frigate and MC40 attempting to engage Light Forces Detachment One.

There was a second slight drawback to the rebel plan; their Lucrehulk had a salvo of antiship torpedoes headed up it’s backside.

‘You realised he had planned that?’ Brenn asked Lennart, trying not to be too surprised.

‘I thought that was what he had in mind, yes.’ Lennart replied, coolly.

‘Do you think we should have Vehrec tested for force sensitivity as well? Might take some of the heat off you.’ Brenn said.

‘Kriff, no, I wouldn’t wish that on anybody, it was just intelligent anticipation.’ Lobbing a torpedo salvo, on IFF homing, at the space where you suspected an enemy ship was going to emerge from hyperspace, was a neat stunt if it worked.

At least, Lennart profoundly hoped Vehrec had remembered to call for torps on IFF only homing.


‘Speaking of intelligent anticipation, and heat,’ Lennart said, looking at the image of the planetary defence batteries turning to bear. One of them vanished in green fire as it was on screen, but there would be others.

‘Clear, or to target?’

‘Clear.’ Lennart decided. ‘Call in wave two on the One and Indivisible. We move to open space on overwatch and then, when the rebels react to wave two, we move to intercept whatever that is.’
Brenn announced ‘Point Delta.’, and Black Prince leapt to hyperspace, for the fourth time that day.

‘Captain, engineering would like to remind you that you’re burning energy as if it was going out of fashion, and rebel deliveries to us really aren’t sufficiently dependable.’ The engineering officer detailed as bridge contact man looked up and said.

‘Tell Mirannon, I can arrange for him to trade the rebel chief engineer’s problems for his own if he likes.’ Lennart bounced back, grinning. ‘Galactic Spirit, I love this job.’

[Vianca]

Nice update, seems you are letting lose the dogs off war.

[Enigma]

Nice update, seems you are letting lose the dogs off war.

" " ??

Loose not lose and of not off

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I think you've both just given me seeds for lines of dialogue;

"Dogs of War? Look, if you know of a pet shop that sells dogs with thermonuclear yield teeth then...actually, I really don't want their address. Now my ex- fiance, on the other hand-"

"Spelling mistakes? Petaton salvos flying in fifteen different directions, and you take the time to worry about spelling mistakes? When the one with my name on it comes in this direction, I want it to be as badly spelled as possible so it'll kriffing miss. Don't jinx it."

The one mistake I always, absolutely and consistently make is typing 'have' as 'ahve', fortunately Word's got used to it by now and autocorrects. Few others- there's a 'want' in 33a that should be 'won't.'

Is this one of the symptoms of being a multiple emulated personality, an extended, albeit correct, concern for detail? And the terrifying thought has just occurred to me- adaptation. If Dr. Nygma really has hidden his trail by scattering multiple copies of his personality and knowledge into every appliance he can get his hands on, then, in that particular brilliant eccentric way, they're going to be changed by, and change, the circumstances in which they find themselves. And there are at least forty of them.

I have got to stop trying to channel Stanislas Lem. Writing the dialogue for what happens when the emulations meet up again, all with their own individualised take on life, the universe and everything- 'Aieee' doesn't even begin to cover it. Oh, well, at least it's a challenge. That and I had already decided to name a large Imperial warship the Cosmonaut Ijon Tichy.

I don't get the rolling eyes either. That really isn't normally a good thing. Cdr Falldess getting annoyed and waxing sarcastic about being left out of the first wave?