Re: Hull 721, plot arc the second
Posted: 2009-05-09 07:39pm
by Eleventh Century Remnant
Good gods, has it really been that long? I don't know what's happened to my sense of time and timing, it seems to have gone walkabout. I woke up on Thursday morning and thought 'It's still March, isn't it?' Um...no.
Still, at least I finally managed to reach a natual chapter end point and produce something.
Hull 721 arc 2 ch 9
Comtech (Leading Spaceman) Lucien Milvan was a perplexed being. He knew that if he mentioned that to any of his shipmates, their comment would be ‘About anything in particular- or, seeing as it’s you, are you just generally perplexed?’
He was painfully aware that, despite the fact that he belonged to a crack ship, he was not a crack spaceman. Most of his shipmates would have said that he was a pain, but they would have been kidding; they thought he was decent enough, if not entirely all there.
He had joined the navy with vague fluffy thoughts of being a hero on one hand, and a deep fear of the limited job openings in his specific field on the other. In college he had gone into information theory, aiming for a comfortable civil service job in the directorate of long dead demographics, or analysing speeder traffic flow patterns or something, but it hadn’t worked out that way.
He should never have written a paper on ambient input and relevance filters in uncertain computing, never been caught with a copy of ‘hyperdimensional decomposition of nested metacomplexities’ in the original Givin, never have allowed that peculiarly nondescript recruiter more than a moment of his time.
Only just in time, he had sat down and tried to make sense of his own pattern; there were no utility uptake numbers waiting for him, only the murk of conspiracy and black, tangled secrets- his test scores, that he had and was expected to get, made him a prospect for the intelligence game.
Screw that for a suicide’s job, he had thought, and decided on cometary hiding; he had the marks from his existing coursework to get a qualification, nothing fancy, then joined the Starfleet in the hope of coming close to what was out to get him to slingshot out past it, some safely anonymous desk job in the imperial armed forces.
Decent academic record, provided nobody looked too closely- one hundred percent for half of it and zero for the other half adding to a solid middle of the road performance- no ambition, not any more, he had thought that he was a natural choice for sensor and signal work on something small and independent, a transport maybe, or shore based if possible.
Then, by a process he was still trying to figure out, he was snatched out of the later stages of training and assigned to a fleet destroyer, attached to a regional support force, to a demanding and dangerous station. He had really been hoping for ‘it’s a dull job, but someone’s got to do it.’
Naturally, he had ended up in signal interpretation. That much made sense. Explaining the reason that he was still here- well, part of the reason was that he was too busy trying to explain it to move on.
If he had ended up as a junior lignyot, he probably wouldn’t have been doing anything very different from what he was doing now; one of four shifts of twenty in sensor interpretation, each shift should have been led by a lieutenant, with a junior or sub- lieutenant deputy, but their lieutenant had mustered out.
Not that it was likely to make much difference; Lieutenant Salus’ main skill had been secretarial, running interference for the interpretation crew, keeping the brass off their back. Their de facto boss was chief petty officer Atzian ‘My granny wanted me to be a pirate; next best thing’ Finbar.
Milvan could have made officer if he’d stayed on at college a little longer, or finished his studies by correspondence, but he was starting to understand now that he wouldn’t have been a good one. He lacked the tactical sense of priority, had no real feeling for what was and wasn’t important.
Most of their time was actually spent practising on the rest of the Starfleet, and there had been days when Milvan had dashed ahead, simulated the algorithm, anticipated the pattern and cracked in record time- what turned out to be low grade administrative dross.
Signals about permissible sock length, approved and disapproved polishing compounds for use on rank squares, sectoral special tax allowances for military pay, updates to the allergy section of somebody’s personnel file. Trivia.
‘Snarkfin’ Finbar seemed able to tell from the smell of a signal how important it was and how much effort it deserved, and if he did plod through decoding, the frequency with which he found something worth plodding through to was astonishing. Something else, Milvan thought, I don’t quite get. Another pattern to decipher.
He was sitting in the Eyeball Garden on Coronet City Highport, with the magnification windows that overlooked Corellian Engineering’s yard structures for the convenience of starship spotters. Out of uniform, with shiny new datapad, and thinking of writing a book.
Hadn’t quite decided what it was going to be about- well, the Starfleet obviously, but what angle to take? Specifically, how heavily to fictionalise it all?
What did the public want? Did they want to hear heroic tales of derring- do fought out at lightning speed, the cut and thrust of continent- splitting energy beams flashing in the interstellar night, fire and fury in the merciless, unforgiving void?
Or was this the season- post Death Star- for the cold and cerebral, for the game of cosmic dejarik, thought and counterthought, move and countermove, ice-cold ruthless reason, hunter stalking hunter?
For a moment he was tempted to honesty- but if I tell it like it is, he thought, no-one will ever believe it. Least of all the censors, which just might work.
The proportion of officers to men on an Imperator was supposed to be around one to eight, but it varied radically from department to department. In theory, there were four main and two minor departments, engineering, weapons, systems, supply and support, and the legion and the wing.
‘Systems’ included com-scan, navigation, shielding heat sinks and routine maintenance (in theory- in practise, engineering) and was the most heavily over- officered. Not in their particular team, but there were always exceptions.
Engineering was about middling, insofar as the engineer officers were actually distinguishable from the enlisted men; gunnery included a lot of junior officers but the pyramid was sharply defined and narrowed quickly.
Com-Scan suffered, or more realistically benefited, from the same kind of blurring. For some reason, mainly to do with pre-war taskings, the subdepartment had more control over it’s intake than most, and was careful to select those it felt would fit in- except that no observer would have shared their definition.
Misfits and eccentrics, people slightly detached from the rest of society, number and pattern obsessed dreamers- if there had been any scientific research still within the reach of less than a quintillion credit special project, they would have been scientists instead.
There really wasn’t enough pure research left to go round, so basically it came down to either getting a legitimate data management job or becoming a bank robber.
The appropriate people for com- scan were those who, emotionally speaking, hadn’t quite made up their minds which. Misfits and eccentrics, yes, but not complete madmen; somewhere between legitimacy and chaos.
Actually, not that unlike the rest of the crew really. Just start writing and see where it goes? No, that would result in a patternless, pointless mayfly ramble. The alternative meant advance planning, setting out the pattern and, hold on a minute, who was that over there?
Those two, no, those five, not satisfied with the view window, turning it off and using their own optics? Milvan turned away quickly, didn’t want to let them know he was peoplewatching, they had a sinister appearance about them.
Than which nothing could be less reliable, but they just felt wrong. They were dressed in smart casual, like normal people- but not particularly like starship spotters. Their magnoculars appeared top of the line civilian, some evidence of wear and tear, but it looked exactly as if they had been scuffed up a little to avoid looking too new.
Could have been journalists, but they were too casually intent, too obviously trying not to look tense. Their clothes hung wrongly, too- their jackets were too heavy, probably concealed ablative armour layers, and was that lump a holster? On Corellia, a gun openly carried would draw less suspicion.
They were simply too intent, too focused on the three destroyers docked in the military yard- and what kind of journalists brought backup? Call it in, but how to do that without attracting too much attention himself?
Shamble off, just stand up, wander away to a public terminal- in addition to being a data system in it’s own right it was a repeater uplink for private com units. Contact Black Prince’s shore office.
‘Front desk? LcomT Milvan, the ship’s being watched by five men in gallery 4-spin-A, their own optics, trying too hard to look casual, don’t look like they’re from around here, they look sort of agent- like. Hello?’
Just a droid- like beep of acknowledgement. He was probably over-reacting. Kriff, they would probably record it to use against him- mock him endlessly. Attacks of paranoia were an occupational hazard.
Really ought not to give in to them. Sit down, shut up and write. Perhaps putting stylus to screen would calm his nerves.
He found an unoccupied bench and opened up his pad; hardly written two lines when there were shuffling noises behind him, two of the watchers. Evidently his inconspicuousness routine needed work. Assuming he had the chance to work on it. Perhaps being paranoid wasn’t that unreasonable after all.
‘You. Still.’ One of them shouted at him, drawing a pistol- a nasty- looking heavy autoblaster. Not exactly common street wear. The agent muttered to his comrade, ‘Take him in?’
‘No chances. Waste him.’
Well, that’s short sighted of you, Milvan thought; planning to leave bodies all over the place isn’t exactly covert or subtle. They must be the police.
A brilliant flash of light. I’m dead, he thought; hold on a minute, it was blue. The first gunman crumpled, the second turned in the direction of the shot and Milvan smashed him in the nose with his datapad. Navy issue, designed to withstand a lot of abuse which was more than the gunman’s face was.
The gunman yowled, his trigger finger spasmed and sent a bolt into the deck; he shook the drops of blood away then got hit again, by a stiff fingered jab to the eye, a kick in the groin, and his gun hand shattered with a hydrospanner.
The third one didn’t get a bolt off, he was watching the wrong way; he feinted away, tried to turn to point his gun, and caught about a dozen blaster bolts. His ablative layer could have absorbed one or two, from light handguns, maybe. Not enough; he died crispy.
Of the two by the magnascope, one was introduced to a demonstration of why hypersonic hammers were a credible martial arts weapon; the shockwave propagated quite a distance, it wasn’t necessary to get a contact hit.
More effective, as witness the way the thug reeled and folded in half under the ultrasonic blast; then splashed all over the deck as the hammer actually did physically hit him. The last one got hit in the head with his own camera.
‘How did I know you were going to get yourself into trouble?’ The leader of the assault party said. Snarkfin.
‘Ah, pattern recognition, chief?’ Milvan said, trying not to look too closely at the assorted organic wreckage scattered around the viewing gallery. It looked much worse when you saw it in the flesh.
‘Something like that. Strip the dead, take the stunned back to the ship. No casualties? Good- spinner, do I want to know what you were doing with a hypersonic mallet?’ Finbar asked one of the assault party, who had the heavy almost- weapon over one shoulder and power engineering badges.
‘Well, we were playing deck hockey with some of the yardies-‘ The engineer petty officer, said, unwisely but it was irrelevant now.
‘Chief, got something.’ The sailor who was frisking the stunned one said. ‘ISB warrant card.’
‘Call that in, too.’
The ship needed some onboard power for what they were about to do. Port side had already been reconstructed, so the port aft and midships secondaries weren’t going to have to be moved, so they were still usable.
They would supply most of the energy required for Mirannon’s local field control forging process, but they were available for other things as well. Sensors and point defence, at least.
The bridge team were largely dispersed; Brenn was away playing student with the Corellian Navy, Rythanor was trying to pad out his pay, as if he needed to, playing guest lecturer at Carida of all places. Actually, what he was primarily doing was showing off. The executive officer post was still unfilled, nobody there.
Mirannon wasn’t a bridge officer, Olleyri had been promoted beyond the rank to command the fighter group they had and already departed for regional force depot, medics couldn’t be expected to know anything about commanding a fighting starship, just as well that the only senior officer that left was actually there.
Gunnery were going to have a lot to do this refit, and there was no way Ob Wathavrah was going to miss out on all the fun- this would put them definitively into heavy destroyer territory.
He enjoyed his job; had thought about it and decided that he definitely didn’t want to move on. Under the circumstances, he could have got a transfer to a larger ship with a heavier gun battery easily enough, but there was no guarantee that he would find as much to shoot at.
Home? Where was that? Vondarc was a tiny backwater flyspeck, only five billion people, a quiet little dispersal/trading port at the hip socket joint of nowhere. Not quite the ass end, that would have been about another three hundred parsecs out. He couldn’t wait to get off the boring little rock and do something.
The place had managed to snooze through the clone wars; hadn’t seen so much as a buzz droid. He had been just too young to have anything to do with them, and not quite bold enough to join up that far underage and get splattered for either side.
Postwar pirate- hunting with the Imperial Starfleet, then, moving rapidly up the ladder in the sector fleet- they had been lucky. Mid rim sector, largely local personnel, not as severely starched and hyperformal as the core worlds or as likely to go rebel as the outer rim.
Actually, that was a serious flaw in the Empire’s security policy, now he came to think of it; sector fleets manned by people from the sector they policed were likely to be dangerously loyal to their own local interests rather than the empire at large. There were problems further out- but the single worst example actually had to be the Corellian Navy.
Well, the regional support heavies were disproportionately manned from the core, that was one thing. He was unlikely to have risen out of the obscurity of the Kiran sector without something unusual happening.
It had actually been sheer dumb luck- that was what he said, anyway. Regional force frigate chasing a rebel fast blockade runner that had dropped out of hyperspace somewhere insystem to break the trail; they hadn’t even been aware of it until they had almost tripped over it.
They had been ordered not to participate in the hunt- region trying to grab all the available glory for itself. Standing normal cruising watches, although they had been lurking as close as possible to the likely scene of the action just in case, and he had been off watch when the collision alarm rang.
Their ship had been an old, bulbous Rendili Dreadnaught, and the target had been a Centax fast medium- weight frigate, a respectable enemy- more than a match, all told, for the superannuated ‘heavy cruiser’.
Fortunately it was simply trying to get away, and had chosen to come out of hiding and make a speed run past the local patrol- using them to blur the targeting picture and as a shield from the fire of the regional force destroyers.
In strict theory, the destroyers should have opened fire anyway. They pointed on and prepared to, and Wathavrah had sprinted for the fire control centre still wrapped in a duvet and undershorts, and laid one central director fired salvo at the fast frigate’s engines- quickly, before they got caught in the crossfire.
Direct hit, and better; shields collapsed under thrust from one side and laserfire from the other, one of the rebel frigate’s hard driven engines ruptured and sent fragments and ionic flux scattering through the rest, they started to go as well- the frigate blew itself apart.
He had been transferred to Sindavathar support group before the sector group could rake him over the coals for disobeying orders, and bounced around from battery commander on a cruiser, deputy chief gunnery officer on a fleet escort destroyer, before landing the plum job of chief gunnery officer on one of the hunting pack destroyers.
That had been nine years, two hundred and eighty-six days ago- the refit would end just about on his ten year anniversary. They had been ten wild, strange years- but once upon a time, he had been ambitious. What more was there to achieve? Where was up, from here?
The heavier battery they were going to get would be interesting, worth seeing into service, but after that? Ah, I’m just suffering from empty nest blues, he decided. So many of the team away, so unusually quiet. A little bit of mayhem would be a welcome diversion.
‘Auxilliary plants Green-1, Green-2 close up for full power, signals alert the wing, point defence to full alert, fields and bulkheads close up.’ Prepare to take damage as far as possible while still connected to the dock, in other words. ‘Heat sinks into circuit, raise portside shields. Man turrets Port- 1 and 3.’
All simple orders, all straightforward enough, but it would take a little time to carry out. Usually, that was electric time- control processors orienting themselves, generators spinning up, safety interlocks coming out of circuit and self tests being run- but now it was people time.
With maybe a quarter of the crew gone and another half on leave, there were gaping holes in the normal watch bill, and it took more thought than usual for everyone still here to remember where the contingency plan put them.
Wathavrah started to worry that he had got it wrong; he had point defence ready, shields up, two main turrets manned and ready in case of a large ship threat- all things a good gunnery officer would think of. What else? He forced himself to think.
‘Ground force, give me an internal security walkdown tour.’ He said, com system routing his words. Most of the legion were still here, that was something- their flash resistant armour would come in handy during the refit. Perhaps the threat was likely to become internal- boarders, criminals, police. Assuming there was any difference between the last two, at the moment.
A security team keeping them under observation- tracking the personnel he could understand, police and their cameras were why paint pellet guns were such a popular on- leave accessory, but the ship? What was the logic behind that?
‘Sensors, anything suspicious?’ he asked, then mentally kicked himself for giving such a vague, misinterpretable order.
Acting sensor control was Senior Lieutenant Ervel Orbiac, a chubby bachelor and simulation freak who wanted a ship of his own one day. He was here because he had no particular reason to go home; he lived for the navy, his men called him ‘shovel’ because he really, really dug it.
Well, Wathavrah thought, let’s see how well he copes with a loose, ambiguous order, he’s going to have to exercise his own judgement if he wants to command- and suddenly a lot of Captain Lennart’s odder pronouncements made a little more sense.
‘Yah, let me open this quarter kilo tin of suspicion…sky survey says no, yes what is it chief? Ah. Grids nine through thirteen, focus on eight four negative one two.’
Another short pause- dammit, where did Captain Lennart keep the remote for the holographic displays? Probably not in the cushions of the command chair, although he checked there anyway.
‘Central computing, bring up bridge holodisplays.’ That worked. What was out there, just forward of the beam and below the ecliptic? Ah, local force unit- Corellian Navy light support ship, military version of a Garman- class asteroid miner, with an escort- mixed fighter and bomber squadron, HLAF-500s and NTB-630s.
What’s wrong with this picture? Wathavrah thought. ‘Well?’
‘Indefinite, but…’ Orbiac tried to put it into words. ‘There’s not enough crosstalk. They’re also keeping too close a formation, fine tuning to remain on station- Corellian Navy doctrine, I checked, is to run loose.’
Wathavrah wasn’t an engine man, but he knew enough of what was, from his point of view, targetology to know what that meant. There were always irregularities in anything pushed that close to the limit, mechanical and electric rhythms resonating with each other, things that needed to be constantly compensated for.
Corellian and Republic- and Rebel- doctrine was to set tolerances for ground maintenance and in-flight systems management that curbed the genuinely dangerous eccentricities and wobblies, but stopped short of trying to eliminate them entirely. That was just chasing an asymptote.
The Imperial Starfleet officially demanded total consistency, total suppression of all deviations, which meant that a lot of time was wasted in fiddly fine tuning. Most ground crews and pilots with any sense stopped somewhere short of that.
The sensors showed a constant stream of minor trajectory and thrust corrections. ‘You’re saying they’re behaving more like an Imperial unit?’ Wathavrah asked, slowly.
‘Yes.’ Orbiac said, after thinking about it, and clearly not happy to have reached that conclusion.
Which implied that possibly the entire squadron was ex Imperial, slightly more reasonably that they were trying to show the Starfleet that anything they could do- even if it was being anal- the Corellian navy could do better.
There were two less savoury options. One of them being that it really was their own fleet running some kind of readiness test or sting operation, the other- he had heard whispered mention of black ops groups, false flag operations to discredit the enemy.
It made a sort of ugly sense. ‘Is that a scheduled Corellian Navy deployment?’ He asked Orbiac. His department, a subdepartment actually, checking local shipping movements was com/scan’s job. Checking the posted flight plans against reality was Navigation’s, and there was a whispered conversation.
‘It’s legitimate, but well behind schedule- only just this side of officially overdue.’
That fit. By kriff, it fit together too well. Corellia was a well guarded system with a significant military presence. A commando operation might get in and out, but commandos tended to have difficulty running around with multi- teraton demolition charges.
A brute force attack on the ships at anchor would be a full Superiority Fleet operation at the very minimum, unless it was done under some exceptionally clever cover. A closer look at those fighters and that freighter would be interesting, if not essential.
‘What do we have from the wing, how many of them are reporting in?’
‘No full formed units yet, individual pilots reporting in and most of them sound hung over- the senior pilot so far acknowledging ready is Squadron Leader Rahandravell.’
‘Bad choice.’ The captain’s voice came from the rear of the bridge module. He had come up as quickly as he could from Engineering, to see what all the fuss was about. ‘You’re thinking political gain operation? Imperial dirty tricks squadron flying rebel fighters?’
‘I thought that was just an evil rumour.’ Wathavrah said, more for the bridge team’s benefit than his own. He didn’t like the idea one bit, and noticed that Lennart hadn’t added what they were both thinking, “and committing atrocities that we can conveniently blame on the alliance.”
‘Think of the political appointees the fleet’s been saddled with over the years; I’m sure there’s someone out there with a sufficiently diminished sense of honour to take it seriously, and enough brutality and mindless obedience further down to do the dirty deed.’ Lennart said.
‘It’s not the service I thought I was joining, Sir.’ Wathavrah said, the touch of formality serving as a warning to both of them. I’d rather not discuss this informally, he meant, because what I think of that idea could be interpreted as anti- imperial sedition, if not outright revolt.
‘Dirty business, isn’t it?’ Lennart wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily. ‘I’m waiting for the next obvious wrinkle, genuine Rebels pretending to be an Imperial political action unit…not that I expect it any time soon, they’ve probably got more sense than to go quite that morally bankrupt.
Still, on the cosmic scale it’s basically a wart, we still have to go with the lesser evil.’ Whether or not Palpatine still deserved that description was a question best left unanswered, too. ‘We treat them as though they were rebels. Who else is spaceborne?’
‘Alpha and Epsilon were the duty squadrons, Mu would be too but they’re still re-equipping.’
‘Right. Epsilon One’s had to deal with too much of the ugly side lately- get the ATRs, escort and assault shuttles up to support, Alpha goes in for the close scan, Epsilon covers. Warn them that it is probably a Q-ship, most likely baby carrier. Nu’s still reequipping too? Recall Beta and Zeta, bring them to readiness.’
Not that he had great hopes of them being in any fit state to deploy. Whoever was masterminding this had got their timing right; it would be a few more days yet before the wing reached the stage of recovering from their hangovers, realising they were bored and starting to spoil for a fight.
Twelve squadrons, standing alert on a one in four rotating schedule; Alpha, Epsilon and Mu today, Beta, Zeta and Nu due tomorrow. With any luck, seven or eight pilots out of the thirty-six of them recalled would be fit to fly.
It was the squadron adjutants’ job to recognise and ground those who were likely to be more dangerous to themselves and their wingmen than the enemy; most of them knew what they were doing. It was the squadron, wing and group commanders’ jobs to if not exactly stop, then at least moderate their ability to wreck themselves in the first place.
In that, they were at a disadvantage- Air Commodore Olleyri had been promoted beyond the rank at which he could command their air group, and had taken quite a lot of accumulated leave to go fishing. Thinking over his options, deciding where he wanted to go and what he wanted to do in the fleet.
At that level, he was no longer expected to fly, he was expected to marshal a Command consisting of eight to twelve Groups, totalling something between a hundred and ninety-two and four hundred and thirty-two squadrons. It wasn’t a pilot’s job any more, it was a chessmaster’s.
Still, the job existed- although the only single ships that could carry that kind of fighter force were battleship- sized fleet carriers and full dreadnoughts. Rather more often, a command was split across multiple lighter craft.
Considering the majority of the people the fleet had found to do it, Antar Olleyri would be a vast improvement on most of them. Lennart hoped he made the right decision, to stay in.
Locally, one of their five wing commanders would step up to fill the group captain’s slot; best man for the job was probably Teret Shulmar, the space transport wing commander- he had time to think during a fight, time to plan, and he was the one who had been quick enough to run the staff work for Group Captain Vehrec over Ord Corban.
The fighter wing commander would change specialties to space transport wing, Bravo One would get the fighter wing commander’s hat, and Alpha Two would move up from adjutant to squadron leader- it wasn’t normal chain of command, but it was the man that mattered, not the position.
Quarrin Vattiera was surprisingly sane for a fighter pilot, which was why he had been an adjutant, and why he would make a good squadron leader- Olleyri had been brilliant, but it was a driven-to-the-edge, maniacal brilliance that couldn’t be sustained. Leaving their lead fighter squadron in slightly calmer hands would be good.
They had thought a lot about what the new wing was going to consist of; it looked as if it was going to be necessary to block off the forward bay, but the edge extensions would add volume, not all of that was going to be taken up by torpedoes, rattlers or point defence.
Some of it was going to be stores and spares bunkers to maintain the additional power reactors, but if the Alliance could do it, surely they should be able to use some of the space up forward on the inside of the extensions for fighter bay space? Move one, probably the multirole, wing out there, use their space to restore some shuttle and dropship volume.
It would be a strange force when it was done. Lennart and Mirannon had tried to think of some cosmetic changes they could make to the X-wing type, to break up the outline and render other Imperial forces less likely to blast on sight, without losing any of the essential performance; without much success.
Mirannon’s fighter designs tended to bloat, as he believed that more really was more, and kept trying to add more power, more guns, more engines- the end results tended to be brutally effective, but also barely describable as a fighter.
The old clone wars craft, the Aethersprites and Eta-2 Actis that had been wished on them, they were really unsustainable; without the changes, maybe, but they would have to manufacture all their own spare parts, down to the drafting of blueprints.
That would have been possible under other circumstances, but not with the extensions, not with the additional weapons and reactors. Setting up a partial production line would have taken too much workshop space.
Lennart wanted no non- hyper capable small craft, and in general, obviously, the more capable the better. Incom’s X-wing would have been ideal, but for that it was an open invitation to friendly fire and took up a lot of deck room for what it could do.
The TIE Hunter was probably the next best thing; they had a squadron already. One more squadron of those, one more of the long haul TIE Sentinel patrol fighter, that would be the multirole wing. Two more Avenger squadrons, if they could be found, to round out the fighter wing, two more squadrons of Starwings to round out the bomb wing.
At the moment, they had half that, and some of it in distinctly unsteady hands. Epsilon squadron had been out the night before, had only been on alert for two hours, and being the stoned, drunken bums they were most of them had to be poured into their cockpits.
That was a slight exaggeration, admittedly; they had been on station, on time, and if they were a little wobbly, none of them had been medically grounded. Epsilon One was first off, not because she was leading as much as that she had been sleeping in the open under her fighter, curled up around the forward landing leg.
Franjia’s head hurt; the previous night was something of a blur, no, wait, it was starting to come back. Most of Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon had ended up in a hotel- the look on the poor valet parking droid’s reactotronic face when a assault shuttle had touched down outside the main doors had been a picture.
The assembled pilots had proceeded to run up a bill for drink and damages that left them joking about whose fighter they would have to sell off to pay it. There had also been a crunchball game with some of the locals in the public bar.
One of the participants had been a used speeder salesman. He had been at the bottom of a scrum, they had sort of broken him, found the showroom keys while they were rifling his pockets to see if he had insurance, and taken most of his stock for “test drives”.
Someone had gone wing walking and fallen off; she remembered that much, didn’t know who, might have been her from the stiffness of her back. The rest of it was hazily emerging from the loose, blurry impression.
She had had a fight with Aron. In front of an audience. They had both been out of their heads, he was drunk and she was stoned. She had taken something that was supposed to be a euphoric, but either it was a bad batch, a bad reaction to her body chemistry, or had subconscious had decided it would enjoy being miserable.
Possibly, it had worked as advertised, and given her the confidence to look square on at her dismal set of options- openly face her misery. She had been in a foul mood, and there had been a lot of shouting and waving of arms, even before Aron had told her that he loved her.
She remembered that bit. She had yelled at him. ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word. I don’t know the meaning of the word. We’re pilots, the only emotion we kriffing have is ego, it’s the only thing between us and the end, that and bloody butchering skill.
Love’s a jamming routine, all we know is kill splashes on the cockpit and notches on the bedpost, I will not be used to illustrionate your sense of worth and answer for your license to commit murder.’
It sounded clearer in retrospect than it had probably been at the time, and it didn’t sound all that clear now. After that- kriff, she had shot him, hadn’t she?
Had she stunned him so it wouldn’t hurt, then blasted him, or was it the other way around, blasted him then stunned him to ease the pain? Or both? She couldn’t have, they would have arrested her or something. Sidearm missing from it’s holster, no way to check. Which if the rest of the squadron had sat on her and taken her gun, that fitted.
She vaguely remembered staggering out to the field, which made no sense, because if I felt like that, she thought, the last thing I’d want to see is another damned starfighter. She remembered trying to sleep in the cockpit, but it had started raining.
Instead of just lowering it, she had clambered out, lowered the canopy from the outside to stop the electronics getting wet, and then curled up on the grass underneath her Pulsarwing.
She had mounted up, gone through pre-flight and taken off entirely by numb reflex. Breathing pure oxygen helped, being connected to the fighter’s life support rig helped even more. The rest of the squadron, wobbling flight indicating most of them were feeling terrible too, were forming up behind her.
That made no sense. If she really had done something that terrible, why were they following her?
Flight control gave them their instructions, and there was an emotionlessly correct list of acknowledgements, most of them disguising various degrees of debility. If that was the way things were going to be…
Alpha were faster, their Avengers could race ahead. Epsilon had been armed to stand alert, torpedo payloads, and there were four assault transports, four escort shuttles and two assault shuttles backing them up. A head on challenge would force the rebs to spring their plan prematurely.
Not that that would be a bad thing- get on with it, get it over with- but the captain seemed to think so, stretching credibility by setting it out to look like an approach exercise. The Avengers and Escort Shuttles headed outsystem at high burn.
‘The way this is intended to look,’ Lennart said, on the bridge, ‘the multiroles have got inside the screen, which is reacting to them. The target’s escort has the thrust, but they’re condemned to escort that lumbering thing, it can’t react to our moves.’
‘What moves might those be, Captain?’ a commanding voice challenged, from the rear of the bridge module. ‘Might I inquire,’ in tones that said he damn’ well could, ‘why you are preparing to attack a Corellian Navy transport?’
Rear-Admiral Thrawn. Lucky sod, Lennart thought; with those eyes, you can never tell whether he’s been working overtime or not. Which he probably has, he’s a professional insomniac, trained himself to remain functionally coherent on minimal sleep- either it’s self- control, or his entire species are like that.
I do the same, Lennart ruminated, except I thought it was just genetic luck- although, isn’t that in it’s own peculiar way exactly what the force is?
He transferred the relevant data- the close focus on the engine outputs and the flight schedule- to a datapad and handed it to the admiral, who raised an eyebrow at him- it had been a long time since anyone had tried to give him a test of reading comprehension.
Half a second later, he handed it back. Lennart was watching him with interest. ‘Political gain operations are usually run out of the Ubiqtorate.’ He said sharply, knowing that Lennart knew.
‘Except that I think the coincidence of a Starfleet organised raid on the local ISB mission and an ISB observation team watching the ship is too prominent for that. Favour called in? Blackmail? Who knows?’
‘Do you believe it would be expedient to inquire?’ Thrawn counterprobed. Also wondering what the leak was.
‘Expedient? No. Probably essential, though. If you don’t want to be implicated in blowing an embarrassing and, as far as galactic political opinion is concerned, murderously dishonest and morally contemptible program.’ Lennart said, openly challenging the rear-admiral to disagree with him on his own bridge.
It would be a hard sell, trying to defend the concept of the empire periodically blowing up a few of it’s own citizens and blaming it on the rebellion; although, arguably, it was statistically inevitable.
How many trillions of people did there need to be, before producing enough sociopaths and eager murderers to staff such a unit? Before producing a devious, conscienceless authoritarian to organise and command it?
Several orders of magnitude fewer, the chiss was sure, than actually existed. On the galactic scale it was inevitable that there would be atrocities, blasphemies against life and justice. It was possible for a sufficiently cynical being, and there were more than enough of those on the Coruscanti social circuit, to write the whole thing off as the ugly end of a very big bell curve.
The galactic scale wasn’t loaded with category C or D heavy torpedoes aimed at the ship whose bridge he was currently standing on, however. That threw things into a somewhat sharper focus.
Lennart’s plan seemed to involve hiding in plain sight, again; blaming the incident on a rare if not unique misuse of a legitimate operational tool, the aggressor squadrons- he had commanded a Recusant squadron and a Providence line destroyer as a teacher at the Raithal academy.
There was certainly an open, acknowledgeable purpose for such things; to pretend that it had been so misused- it would boil down to who knew and who was willing to admit to what.
‘Captain, a moment.’ The rear admiral wasn’t making it a request; he beckoned Lennart towards the rear of the bridge and the day cabin.
‘Well, go on, tell me it’s too straightforward to be true.’ Lennart said once they were away from the main body of the bridge crew.
‘You have a great deal to blame your conspiracy theorists for. By pouring ridicule on the very idea and removing intellectual rigour from it, it protects all genuine double-dealing, if that term can be said to be consistent with itself at all, with a bodyguard of nonsense.’ The admiral said.
‘Which in itself is a powerful aid to secrecy. One might almost suspect the political class planned it that way.’ Lennart said, smiling. Also thinking; you, your? He really is from far out on the rim. ‘The techniques of politics are usually little more than an elaboration of the principles, and among the oldest of the lot is simply following the money. Who actually stands to gain?’
‘Apart from the obvious? They will be disguising their will by working through other agencies as far as possible; a simple appeal to stability from a high ranking official would gain cooperation, and you are not a conformist. There are forces who would willingly be rid of you on the principle that it would make the galaxy a tidier place.’ Thrawn pointed out, sardonically.
‘You’re downgrading yourself to a target of opportunity?’ Lennart returned the serve. ‘Regardless, there should be some paper trail.’ He stepped back into the main body of the bridge and said ‘I want prisoners. We need to break their plausible deniability, which unfortunately means let them- or provoke them into- shooting first.’
‘That sounds unpleasantly like a situation where you have to rely on the stupidity of your opponent.’ The rear- admiral pointed out, disapprovingly.
‘There’s a limit to how creative we can be tied up alongside the dock.’ Lennart said, just before an idea occurred to him. ‘Flight control, begin the attack. Com/scan, full intrusion measures, war reserve three. Maximum intensity active scan. Signals, open broadcast to Corellian naval control- ask them if that ship’s supposed to have a hold full of X-wings.’
Lennart was, in essence, resorting to bluff; trying to spook them into believing that they had been rumbled. On Corellians, it wouldn’t have worked, but they weren’t Corellian, they were a mostly core worlder Imperial Starfleet crew- they may have lacked self doubt but they didn’t lack self preservation.
The blow-out panels on the sides of the transport fell open, revealing, as expected, a nest of rebels. The political gain squadrons couldn’t do anything excessively radical; they had to use recognisable not to say iconic rebel types- A,B, X, Y.
Local rebel cells had filled out the rest of the alphabet, and some of them were highly effective, but the ISB wanted the amorphous lurking terror, they had no use in fuelling a local rebellion for local people. No C-wing mass autoblaster carriers, no M-wing light fighter/attack, no W-wing turret gunships.
The freighter might possibly have held more, but two squadrons sortied quickly enough that they must have been sitting there ready, waiting for the word. One full squadron of X-wing, one split two flights Y, one flight B wing. All with overly stereotypical Alliance markings that wouldn’t have convinced a veteran, but looked the part for the newsies.
Some, crackly, chatter- not enough, still a shade too disciplined, too Imperial. The Corellian Navy was starting to react, too, but their craft would only reach the fight well after it had begun, and would be an interesting problem with the rebels’ first squadron using Corellian fighter types.
‘This is probably a direct response to the raid on the local ISB building.’ Lennart said, conversationally, to the rear-admiral.
‘Sloppy.’ Thrawn said, looking disgustedly at the image of the freighter. ‘Very poor discipline on their part.’
Lennart was about to ask him if he would have done better, before he realised the answer to that would probably be yes, and the next obvious question, so you have some experience commanding “anti-Imperial” forces then, the answer to that would probably be yes too.
‘Deliberately so?’ He theorised. ‘Let us face it, the program, however contemptible it may be considered to be, has official backing. Doing something stupid like actually saying “look, Imperial forces pretending to be Rebels” would be all the powers that be need to authorise a summary execution or thirty thousand.
I don’t think we’re supposed to play this one straight. We’re supposed to try to outguess them and overreach ourselves. Or react in straightforward moral outrage, and- wait a moment.’
‘How are the Corellians going to react?’ Thrawn divined his doubts. ‘They are the backdrop against which this is going to have to be played out, and for their sake, you are going to have to swallow your morals.’
Whoever was pulling the strings, whoever set this trap, was not without subtlety. Moral outrage was the key, but it was, in it’s own way, a binary device, a bomb with a fast and slow acting component. If it was mishandled here and now, that was an end of him. There was even the small chance he might actually be blown up.
Survive longer, and the thoughts of all of this would start to fester. He would start to think too deeply into all of this, especially if a few of those warheads were pointed at the planet rather than the ships, and- what was there that would most effectively retain his services to the Empire, or at least the mission? Ah.
‘For my own personal gain I should encourage you to suffer a bout of conscience and go renegade; chasing you down would add usefully to my reputation and prospects.’ High probability that Lennart would instinctively bristle at that, contemplate rising to the challenge; fine, the chiss needed him to think that through and get over it.
He ought to recognise that there was no practical alternative to hegemony, that without a strong central power the galaxy was in terrible danger- and that strong central power had it’s inevitabilities about it.
Among them that oldest of political principles- power corrupts. Any great state would simply from the fact that it exercised authority contain rogues and scum and filth- morally it may be regrettable, demographically it was inevitable.
Lennart believed that, or claimed to, but the chiss rear-admiral thought the corellian captain of the line was starting to lose perspective, liable to start asking ‘but what if it wasn’t so?’ and doing stupid, dangerous things on that account.
Three things occurred to Lennart, and he snapped out two of them, ‘Ask me again in seventy-six days- and is that the choice you made, to swallow your scruples, when you threw in with the Empire?’
‘Your spies are correct.’ Thrawn said, coolly. ‘I do have an outsider’s perspective; and from where I stood, the Republic was living in a fool’s paradise. There are historical tasks for which the Empire is necessary.’
Lennart made a show of looking round the chiss, peering past him. ‘Funny.’ He said. ‘You don’t look like a galaxy. That’s too damn’ broad a perspective to be useful day to day, incident to incident.’
‘If your small deeds are uninformed by any larger perspective, how do you expect to act effectively?’ the non-human rear admiral said, expecting it to be a rhetorical question. ‘How do you expect to rise above that stochastic mass whose inevitabilities you profess to loathe, without a greater concept?’
‘A good- and complicated- question, and one that deserves more than a simple answer. For the moment, I need to put a little effort into not dying long enough to come up with a counterargument, so if you’ll excuse me…’
, though that might take him too close to flag rank and all the concomitant burdens and outside attention for his own good.
.