"The holocamera feed is working correctly?"
"Yes, Grand Moff." The Bothan technician actually bowed. "We are transmitting live on a secure holochannel." Stuart made a dismissive gesture, and she scurried out of the briefing room.
"Excellent. Council members, and Imperial officers cleared to view this transmission, this will be the first of three high-level briefings. It is essential that our key decision makers understand the big picture, so that they can put their local challenges in context."
"Our research, development and recovery teams have been making excellent progress of late. Several new ship designs are ready to begin production, most notably the famed Imperial class Star Destroyer. They are formidable ships, but currently we only possess three shipyards capable of restoring these hulls, SDN, ASVS and HPCA."
"The Bayonet class is a further advance on the Guardian class, and we will begin switching over our gunboat production to this new design as soon as possible. Responding to the concerns several officers have expressed about the extent of our fighter coverage, I ordered a detailed design study into a very light 'escort carrier'. I must say though, I do not recommend this design for production. The recent cultist attack on ASVS illustrated the vulnerability of such ships in heavy fleet combat."
"The TIE Phantom is not a frontline starfighter, but is a viable replacement for our TIE Scouts which will hopefully reduce attrition to those squadrons. The Aardvark... well, let us just say that that is the pet project of Comptroller McNamara and I have some doubts as to its combat value."
“Strategic Space Command have been continuing to run their own parallel research program, which has produced additional designs. As usual for SSC, they are highly effective on paper but also highly expensive to construct. These designs can only be built at the SSC drydocks over HPCA.”
“I must say that I am impressed that SSC beat our primary research team to production of a viable interdiction craft. However the Rapier is a disappointment – I cannot see how any anti-starfighter escort could possibly be worth four times the cost of a standard gunboat. Moving on... Emperor Wong! I was told you were unable to make it to this briefing.”
The ruler of the Rationalist Empire looked older, worn down somehow, yet more dangerous than ever. Clad in black robes, he was accompanied by a familiar armoured figure.
“I have had some success in the field of 'research and development' myself. Special Operative Stark here is the result.”
“I live to serve the Emperor once more.” The voice was familiar, yet somehow flat, deadened.
“I was not aware that the difficulties with brain imprinting were...”
“They were not. I used... special techniques to force the personality transfer. Oh, but I do not wish to interrupt.” The Emperor smiled sarcastically. “Do proceed, Grand Moff.”
“Yes, well... we have also been making progress in improving our ground units.” Grand Moff Stuart continued to glance at the Emperor nervously. The AT-AT is finally in series production, though at a low rate given the cost inflation the program has experienced.
“We learnt a lot from Dantooine. For defence, the walker group came up with a design mounting dedicated anti-speeder weaponry. For attack, our techs have been scouring the depots for repairable airframes, and they've come up with two designs we can make airworthy on short notice. Finally, we received this infantry weapon design from the 'HAB' laboratory. The suggestion that it should be fired from the hip was obviously meant as some kind of joke, but we have succeeded in designing an appropriate stabilised tripod for it, so it is now ready for mass production.”
“Finally... I have decided to partially declassify the Arc Hammer project. You can understand the necessity of keeping the details from you during the development phase, given the apparently extensive infiltration of our data networks.”
“You will find the full details in the appropriate archive file, which you should now be able to access. Colonel Pace assures me that the prototypes check out and full production is ready to begin at our discretion.”
“Now, we must once again address the question of where to allocate our scarce resources...”
Moff O'Farrell interrupted. “Before we do that, Grand Moff, could you at least tell us where our fleet is? I understand that both our battlecruisers were ordered away to an unknown destination.”
“That is classified at this time. Let's just say that they're attending to 'unfinished business'.”
