Hull 721, plot arc the second

[Richardson]

The BP is clearly what happens when the Enterprise is writ-large, and Scotty's equivilent allowed to run amok and commit his atrocities against the laws of physics.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Richardson, admit it, you're fishing for a reaction...
Does your user name have anything to do with Edward L. Beach, by the way?

Look at the class history. Imperator-I, tractor beam guidance antenna so prominent it looks as if it was an afterthought, small number of very heavy guns, paddle thrust deflectors. Imperator- II, ring deflectors, tractor control moved inside the hull, two (brim trench) turrets deleted, larger number of lighter weapon systems- other differences between the two, depends on who you talk to, I'm assuming West End was wrong in this and there really isn't that much of a power upgrade between the two.

Then you get the more radical variants- there are heavy interdictor variants of both hulls; there's the closed- bellied, reactor- embedded Tector radical variant, the open- bellied fleet support carrier version that has no official name but I choose to refer to for fanfic purposes as Unraveller, Retexor class.

The class is modifiable, to a quite radical degree- and considering the chain of command of sector fleet runs through the Moff, which post possesses a very high degree of local autonomy at least in the years of the civil war after the suppression of the senate, I have no doubt that there are dozens of not hundreds of minor variants and field expedients in addition to the listed major subtypes. The bureaucratic aspect, getting someone else to sign off on it, is far more challenging than the actual physical modifications.

That may be one thing the Federation Starfleet actually got right; the 'five year mission' thing- because a long service crew that know their ship inside out are going to be able to make it perform far closer to the edge of the envelope than a raw, unpractised crew. Consider that Fleet Destroyer Squadron 851 (yes, the number is significant) are a regional support outfit with much higher standards than the sector fleets anyway, and their turnover is low; they have a lot of time to get to know the ship inside and out- although hopefully not inside out- and push that envelope.

Port-4 (who, if they manage to survive the legal process, are likely to become Fire Direction, Axial Battery) are extremely good; but one of the things that makes them that good is spending four to eight hours a day on some form of training exercise, for each of something over three thousand days.

As far as the X-wing thing goes, the current plan is triangles of thin skin plating fixed onto the leading edge of each S- foil, to change the plan view from the aft- set straight wing to something much more like a delta wing, and probably fold-out panels at right angles to those, to change the fighter's profile from ahead or astern. The basic objective being to change the outline enough that it is no longer instantly obvious that the thing's an X-wing, and an attacking Imperial pilot should look closely enough to spot the fact that the thing would be plastered with prominent Imperial roundels.

That's all. Unfortunately, even that little- the plates have to be protected by the navigational shields and acceleration compensators at a minimum, the hyperdrive fields have to include them- compromises performance to a degree, by stretching the various force fields thin enough that they either have to be overdriven, reducing endurance and time between refits, or allowed to be weaker. Or replaced with more powerful field generators, which causes all kinds of knock on changes.

[Vianca]

As far as the X-wing thing goes, the current plan is triangles of thin skin plating fixed onto the leading edge of each S- foil, to change the plan view from the aft- set straight wing to something much more like a delta wing, and probably fold-out panels at right angles to those, to change the fighter's profile from ahead or astern. The basic objective being to change the outline enough that it is no longer instantly obvious that the thing's an X-wing, and an attacking Imperial pilot should look closely enough to spot the fact that the thing would be plastered with prominent Imperial roundels.

That's all. Unfortunately, even that little- the plates have to be protected by the navigational shields and acceleration compensators at a minimum, the hyperdrive fields have to include them- compromises performance to a degree, by stretching the various force fields thin enough that they either have to be overdriven, reducing endurance and time between refits, or allowed to be weaker. Or replaced with more powerful field generators, which causes all kinds of knock on changes.

Beter use those clone fighters their wings, that way you got one wing that splits in two and then those two split in another two.
Or they could try Babylon 5 style starfuries with help of TIE and X-Wing parts.

[Kartr_Kana]

Vianca the Outrider is actually a YT-2400, the YT-2000 I can't remember for sure but I think it's a -2100 could be wrong though.

Finbar hate to burst your bubble but you can actually scan a ship and tell what it's cargo is. The second an Imperial ship detects four fighters in the hold it's game over. Also if you're using those cargo bays for hangers where are you storing the extra ordinance, fuel, spare parts and other supplies? It's a lot of work for very little gain, you're probably going to be better off with using the HT-2200 as a transport for boarding troops and a holding area for captured crewers.

On the whole YT-gunboat idea I think you're better off taking a military design like the Sentinal-assault shuttle and modifying that. Add torpedo/missile launchers to the landing ramp with ammunition reaching back into the cargo hold/troop bay. Make it into an ultra heavy bomber. If you're looking for a black ops ship then the YT becomes useful cause of it's proliferation.

[Crayz9000]

As far as the X-wing thing goes, the current plan is triangles of thin skin plating fixed onto the leading edge of each S- foil, to change the plan view from the aft- set straight wing to something much more like a delta wing, and probably fold-out panels at right angles to those, to change the fighter's profile from ahead or astern. The basic objective being to change the outline enough that it is no longer instantly obvious that the thing's an X-wing, and an attacking Imperial pilot should look closely enough to spot the fact that the thing would be plastered with prominent Imperial roundels.

That's all. Unfortunately, even that little- the plates have to be protected by the navigational shields and acceleration compensators at a minimum, the hyperdrive fields have to include them- compromises performance to a degree, by stretching the various force fields thin enough that they either have to be overdriven, reducing endurance and time between refits, or allowed to be weaker. Or replaced with more powerful field generators, which causes all kinds of knock on changes.

The only issue with extending the wings forward as deltas is that in attack configuration, the S-foils would then obstruct the pilot's field of view (this, by the way, is the primary problem I have with some of the newer designs such as the awkward Chiss Clawcraft and completely insane CF9 Crossfire).

One possible compromise might be to replace the S-foils with four TIE style radiator panels. Leave the Incom engines in their current mounts, and put rapid-firing TIE blasters at the wingtips. Since the wings are hinged anyway, the hinges form an immediate detachment point -- spare wings should be something that Incom carries anyway. Once the wing has been redesigned, it's just a matter of recalibrating the compensators and hyperdrive fields for the new geometry.

Here's a quick shop of the idea I had floating around. Looks a bit goofy, but you should get the idea.

[fractalsponge1]

Well I've already had my go at uglies, but the restricted vision thing shouldn't be a problem for an imperial pilot, since they must have some kind of virtual environment feed from hull sensors into the helmets; witness the tie pilots in ANH looking back at walls. Doesn't seem like the Rebels have the same, but that's probably just a budget and resources issue rather than an X-W being unable to do it (though the avionics really might not be that advanced compared to what they would've been in Imperial service).

Though in the end, trying to retrofit an X-W to imperial service still seems to be trying to fill a taken niche to me. Black Prince already has access to Avengers, and that's a comprehensively better design than the X. Both have light warhead load, durable shields (at least from the games), quad laser, hyperdrive. Probably lower endurance, but is that worth all this trouble? The X-W is being given rather too much credit here, imho

[Panaka]

Instead of effectively making an "Ugly"out of tie and X-wing parts, how about making a folding wing version of a regular X-Wing. Think US Navy style folding wings.
Depending on the internal structure you can have them folf upwards, sidewards like a Hellcat or a combination of both.
Weight will increase but that could be dealt with.
Bottom wing is a bit of an issue since any folding will need to clear the upper wing and you need to keep the amount of space above the fighters in mind. I can think of a few ways to deal with that, but it requires more complicate systems. Mainly a double jointed upper wing.

Add two equipment bays (think Apache, but sleeker. Or how the RA-5 Vigilante was modefied to carry the recon sensors after the bomber variant was canceled) to the lower quater on each side of the x-wing. This allows you to move equipment to there while freeing internal space for a bigger fuel load and new powersystem. That allows for more thrust to offset the weight increase and enough power to cover everything by the shields and innertia fields. Paint them black with white Imperial roundels.

If at all possible see if the Nationalised Incom (what remained of Incom after the rebels libirated the X-wing design team) will build them. Thats better then doing the modifications yourself.
Issues could possibly be worked out by our favorite Chief Engineer, as long as he's kept on a tight leash.

[Richardson]

11... who? I'm just saying, this is just progressing into the mad science realm that only a few engineers have ever reached. a VERY few, and this is pretty much the only engineer that doesn't work for himself that can actually get away with this madness.

[Vehrec]

All this talk about modding fighters with all these ridiculous add-ons is making me mad. These are high performance, minimal margin of error craft. Shifting the seat in an X-wing forward just a few centimeters is enough to throw the entire inertial dampening rig out of alignment. Some of the things people are posting are sufficient perversions to make me go Imperial on whomever dreamed them up.

In the meantime, I've found myself a groundcar to drive to work now that I'm flying a desk most days. In keeping with my fascination with old cool things, it has only the most basic technology-not even an autodriver or a navigation system. It's a blast to drive, even if I don't get quite as much fun as I used to.

[Crayz9000]

For what it's worth, the ugly I posted was more of a late-night brain-addled joke than a serious idea.

You might as well just design a new fighter using X-wing and TIE parts and new stuff to glue it all together. It's what John DeLorean did, after all.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Vehrec, you're right- the original text runs

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.

Also, as a minor aside, at the end of the Ord Corban incident there was still one TIE Advanced- X7/ proto- Defender hull left reasonably intact, plus one damaged and drifting. Wonder where they went

I have to make some guesses about what's on the other side of the foggy window, and one of those is that the basic technology is sound- but not to be taken lightly. You can do a great many things if you take the time and trouble to do them properly, and the computer and workshop suite on a Star Destroyer can do that, with sufficient skill on the part of the user. Certainly if the Alliance can do it, the Empire should be able to do it better. Mirannon may be towards the outer end of the bell curve, but the curve exists.

Oh, and Ned Richardson was the submarine commander from 'Run Silent, Run Deep' and the sequel 'Dust on the Sea' by Edward L. Beach. Go with the books, not the film.

The final wing composition is going to look something like,
Bomb Wing, four squadrons of Starwing fighter-bombers. Possibly two of the squadrons incorporate single flights of the Xh-1 PulsarWing corvette- hunter and bomber destroyer, assuming the experimental type Franjia currently has is ever going to make it into production.

Fighter wing, four squadrons of TIE Avenger heavy fighters.

Multirole wing- this is the problem. There exists bay slip space for another four squadrons, but what? Non hyper capable types, maybe Interceptors for close defence- unlikely. Possible, but unlikely. Something attritional, the 'we can afford to lose these' types? Doesn't really fit. Feeding off the enemy, designing a modification that can be applied consistently to an enemy type and scavenging, isn't the worst option available- but anything pushed that close to the edge is going to be very change sensitive.

The TIE Sentinel is quite appealing a choice; it's the supposed (not entirely verified) ancestor of the TIE Phantom from the Rogue Squadron games, which I looked at it's stated qualities and decided it was a customs and garrison reaction force fighter. It's got a much larger cockpit ball- which makes it a bigger target but also means it has more comfort for long haul pursuit/patrol missions. Triple laser and twin ion, hyper and sublight performance are supposed to be good.

The other prime candidate is the TIE Hunter, which looks quite a lot like Sienar's attempt to replicate the X-Wing series themselves anyway.

[Vianca]

What about those next gen. droide fighters from Episode 3, Remnant?
You only need to change the hull shape into something a bit more Imperial.

It would work as close in support and if you loss them, Ooops, to bad.
It ain't as if they can't be replaced with a new one.
Thus they might either be smaller or have an short range FTL drive.
Maybe both.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Finally, some more...
This is too big to post in one chunk, apparently, so the first half is this, more in the next post.
This chapter got quite strange, actually, positively domestic in fact as twenty years or so of Jorian Lennart's past catch up with him, and I go rooting around in the background of the man, rather than the professional officer.

Amongst other things, when he told Kor Alric that as an oragnism, all he really sought was to be first among equals, he was either lying to the special assistant or (more probably) to himself; an that in growing up,he may actually have mellowed.

Hull 721 arc 2 ch 10 (segment 1)

The fight was on now; what it was actually about and what it would decide, anybody’s guess at this point- but it didn’t look like it was going to be a good day to be a rebel. Or a fake rebel, which none of the intercept team had been informed about yet.

Six NTB630, close relatives of the hopelessly obsolescent Incom/Subpro Aggressive ReCon fighter, which had been good enough in it’s day- but that day had come to an end even before the closing stages of the clone wars. They were too big, too slow, too easy targets, and their shielding was designed for another age.

Before the wars, most fighters had carried blasters- they could pump out enough rate of fire to hit fast, agile targets like Aethersprites and the more widely dispersed units of the Kuat range in use by police and civil defence.

Blasters looked very good, on paper; they were straightforward, low power drain and easily maintainable. Not very potent, but then, it wasn’t wartime. The naval torpedo bomber’s shields were up to the task of surviving in that environment.


Slower firing, much harder hitting lasers had become more common, rising to being dominant during the war itself, and the subsequent craft had continued the trend. The TIE basic fighter model had no combat shields not because the empire was too cheap, but because at that stage, with weapon outrunning defence, there was no realistic expectation it would matter a damn.

A fast light hull to outfly them, and even bigger guns if possible so that when you get killing position you can make sure they die and stay dead, none of this ‘damage control’ crap. That had seemed like the way forward.

The wheel was starting to turn back the other way now, with the antiship strike requirement, impossible to fulfil with ultralights, driving the development of higher powered fast heavies big enough and heavily enough shielded to have some kind of survivability against lasers.

No change at all in the physics underlying it all, that hadn’t moved in the slightest, but there had been twenty years of operational analysis driving investment in technology. The Starwing was superior in every respect, except possibly pilot workload.


The Heavy Light Assault Fighter type 500 was as confused and contradictory a design as it’s designation suggested; a medium dogfighter upgraded to a strike fighter, two long heavy laser cannon on a plump, rounded wedge hull like an obese A-wing, which was where the resemblance ended.

They had too many small engines, lots of speed and apparently decent agility, but they were oversize and overweight for their capabilities; relatively easy targets for most imperial fighters, dead meat before an Avenger.

That seemed to be a constant; Corellian Engineering could make heavy freighters that handled like blockade breakers, light freighters that handled like dogfighters, but ask them to produce an actual fighter and they came up with something that had the grace of a heavy freighter. It was as if their genius didn’t kick in until they had a big enough hull to go to town on.


The actual rebel fighters, 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, but few of their improvisations had caught on. Mainly, the imperial security bureau wanted the amorphous lurking terror, they had no use simulating a local rebellion for local people.

If the Corellian types were marginal, the four B-wings were substantially worse. Their deficiencies were well known to both sides, and the four in sight had shut down weapons, diverted all power to engines to close to a viable launch distance, get their rounds off and run.

The Imperial fighters were converging on them now, the Avengers scything in from outsystem, the Starwings pressing outwards from insystem, and the opening shots were a volley of light turbolaser fire directed at the B-wings. Partly from the Assault Shuttles, but mainly from Franjia’s heavy fighter.


She knew the B-wing, maybe not exactly intimately but more than well enough to understand exactly how it should be attacked. Lined up on the first- with flight commander’s stripes- got an active lock, and started chasing it with alternate fire.

The lead B-wing tried a short-radius twist out of the line of fire, but she anticipated, led it, the first shot caught it, blew it’s shields and sent it tumbling; she chased it with the fire pipper, put one bolt into it and blew it apart.

Very explosively. Not a good sight, the fireball of a class C heavy torpedo- and the other three turned stern on to it and used the blast to break formation, open the angles.

They ran before the fireball and then curved- thrusting sideways, direct main engine thrust, trying to make the maximum possible distance towards the target.

Not consistent with current Alliance doctrine; it did follow from the old Republic fleet doctrine that evolved into the Imperial way, mission first. Pressing on regardless was exactly what the TIE squadrons were supposed to do- the rebels, and the Empire’s recon/strike squadrons, were more aware of their own value.


At the first touch of a targeting beam, they scattered; that was much more normal. One ceased acceleration entirely, a brutal wrench on the ship’s systems and a move of desperation.

Briefly, she felt utterly tired. I don’t really want to kill anybody today, she thought, I’m too drained to take it in. Stims and breathing gas helped, but- is this really important enough, am I, that other people deserve to die for being in my way?

Should have thought of that before you got in the cockpit, shouldn’t you, she thought. Still, could say the same about him- and he was a rebel, he had bet his life on the justice of his cause. Or rather, with the tools he needed to serve it. More fool him.

I’d get creamed in a tumbling match, mind’s wandering everywhere, I am definitely not on the ball, she recognised. Still, good luck to them trying to get that close. She didn’t need to dogfight, with six megaton LTL under the wings.


Franjia waited half a second for the reb to realise that there weren’t laser bolts flashing past in front of him and that he needed to resume acceleration, get moving and weaving again- then she shot him. One second, four round burst, three of them hit.

Enough to shatter the structure, breach the reactor before it could failsafe, and cook off the warheads. Just as well for his comrades that he had hung back- there was another brilliant fireball, a set of standard C or D ship- killers.

That made sense, but it was still unusual for the rebels to have so many of the right tools for the job to hand. Although possibly they were improvising again- the heads should be wrecked by the destruction of their craft, not outright detonated.


The rest of Epsilon was engaging the Y and X wings that were heading their way; her fighter and it’s sensor and targeting gear was tied into the squadron net, the extra eye being of some use- although she really needed an extra brain lobe and three hands to make full use of it.

Right, she found her mind wandering in the direction of the Y-wings, where can I shoot one of them to trigger the ejection systems for the astromech droid? Wrong end of the alphabet. Besides which, the brain- sweat of simply working the flight systems and electronics would demand she focus if anything would.

The B-wings scissored, crossing each other’s tracks as one turned stern on and the other turned to try to fight, opening fire on her at extreme range from it’s cockpit- chin autoblasters.


Now they were an interesting development, long- barrel, thermal shrouded, high rate of fire, supposed to take advantage of the blaster technology to pump enough light into the air to hit a small, manoeuvring target at much longer range than standard lasers. In other words, spray TIE fighters. It was the right idea, but the wrong chassis for the job.

There was a minority rebel fighter type, local force from the mid rim, that carried massed autoblasters- crescent shaped, with the gun mounts in the tips of the crescent. It was, inevitably, nicknamed the C-wing. Another slow, heavily built type, it was almost as poor a combination, making up for deficiencies rather than playing to strengths.

The natural option was to stick a pair of heavy autoblasters on an A-wing, and there were Fighter and Interceptor squadrons living in fear of the day when the rebels finally managed to put two and two together.

It didn’t seem to be today, and in any case the Empire had already taken the next obvious steps forwards- massed batteries of lasers, and in her case, turbolasers.


The autoblaster fire reached out for her heavy fighter, and she danced out of the way- thank the galactic spirit the changes hadn’t extended to the flight controls. The clumsy B-wing overcorrected trying to keep it’s sights on, and she slipped inside and put three rounds into it. Low order secondary detonation; just the engines letting go.

The fourth was salvoing it’s missiles as fast as the launchers could kick them out, without waiting to get to optimum distance- she was pointing on when it was torn apart by one of the assault shuttles.

The HLAFs were launching as well, only one of them at Epsilon, the rest at the staryard. She let the predicting gunsight rest on one of them for a second- the missile wasn’t locked on to anything specific, just the planet.


That got transmitted to the carrying ship as well. ‘Com-scan, what’s Corellia doing?’ Lennart asked.

‘Planetary shields are activating, stabilising out at low power, local defence systems are active, the Corellian Navy’s too busy organising itself to do much liaising with us, there’s traffic between them and the outpost. Fighters are scrambling, more than just a first alert force.’

Most planets would have whatever local defence they ended the clone wars with at most, and no more than an Imperial garrison wing on top of that. Suppression of local armed forces was an enormous job with dubious if any benefit, and a good many moffs preferred to let sleeping dogs lie rather than take the chance of driving them to the Rebellion.

Usually, on the space side, that amounted to a starfighter wing or two and maybe a handful of gunboats. Corellia had one of the largest staryards in the galaxy and could manage a damned sight more than that.

Entirely apart from being the home base for the sector fleet, full of units rotated out of the line for rest, refit, refresher training, recruiting up to strength, it was defended like the primary target it was.


‘There aren’t going to be enough rebels to go round- sorry, enough “rebels”. That and lobbing a handful of standard D‘s at the planet itself…does this look like Phase One to you?’ Lennart asked the rear admiral.

‘On the planet, improbable.’ Thrawn decided. ‘Leaving the masks aside for the moment, the Corellian Navy are sufficiently competent to guard against that possibility. The concept of an all or nothing attack-‘

‘Makes far more sense than an all or nothing defence, I know, but for those warheads lobbed at the planet. If I was wanting to spark an emotive response that would dilute defence command’s quality of thinking- and the real distractive value, they can’t possibly afford not to commit enough for a certain intercept.’ Lennart interrupted.

‘Do you always interrupt your superiors?’ Thrawn prodded him.

‘Why do you think I never wanted to be a flag captain?’ Lennart bounced back.

‘At least you have some awareness of your own limitations. Work on that.’ The admiral countered, acid dripping from his voice. ‘In any case the window of opportunity is too small.

Now that you have detached your organised fighter cover, you are dependent on Corellian fighter defence- which will happen at the speed of liaison, and their primary charge is their own world of course. A second strike on Corellia would be pointless- but a second attack on this ship would be feasible.’


Lennart thought about it for a second; the admiral was probably right. ‘You think they can react that quickly, move from what must already be a backup plan to complete, and effective, improvisation?’

‘Of course. The standard of personnel chosen for such duties is high- they may be a moral vacuum, but not an intellectual one. In their position I would use the mass shadow of the planet as my descent point.

A strain on systems, but it would put the attack force within the inner defence perimeter. Approach from the blind side, crash transition, high speed low orbit pass, firing up at the dockyard, the horizon for cover on departure.’ He sounded merely academically interested, as if it was a schoolbook problem.

‘That and our willingness to cover ourselves has probably made enough of an impression on the Corellian Navy that they won’t be looking to cover us as a first reaction- flight, what do we have coming up from the recalls?’ Lennart asked the duty controller.


‘The usual mixed nuts.’ The duty controller hadn’t been relieved by the alpha team when they went to battle stations- one of those gaps in the watch list. ‘Thirty-eight response, nineteen medical down checks, six Hunters, five Interceptors, six Bombers, four Starwings airborne, Squadron Leaders Jandras and Alvian reporting in.’

The rear-admiral was about to roast the man for irreverence, but Lennart cut across him again and said ‘Good- group the Bombers and Starwings under Alvian and have them take low position, tell Jandras he has the Hunters and Interceptors and to take them out high. False posture.’

He noticed the admiral out of the corner of his eye, calculating furiously. In the end he reduced his questions to the factor he felt Lennart must be relying on. ‘Time lag?’

‘Yes.’ Was all that needed to be said.


The primary engagement was not going the “rebels” ‘way at all. The heavy Starwings with their bomber grade electronic warfare fits in front of them, the fast- charging Avengers coming up behind, it seemed as if their only hope was to stay in between and hope the fighter force shot at each other.

If that was it, then they were doomed. The heavy ship- killers they were loaded with didn’t help; they weren’t much smarter than the standard torpedo, and they were definitely slower accelerating- difficult to use except in an almost head on pass. Not that they didn’t try.

One or two bursts in amongst Epsilon squadron might clear their way- no, they knew that trick too well, the heavy lasers and ions could deal with that. At most they bought a little time and distraction.

The rebels were being herded, and knew it; the starwings were biding their time, manoeuvring and accelerating enough for evasion, the heavy ships with them peeled off to cover the tangents- intercept a rebel attempt to break past the heavy fighters- and the Avengers were closing them down fast.


What the kriff are they thinking? Franjia thought. She was too busy thinking technically to fly. Sienar had got that right, at least; the ergonomics of the TIE served to embed the pilot in the fighter very well, it didn’t feel like you were doing the technical work of flight management.

The starwing was less intuitive and more involved, the PulsarWing was still really a test article best suited to a test pilot with a degree in aerospatial engineering. She had to think, had to make time to think.

The rebs should have starburst. Smashing though a TIE line might be possible, but not heavy fighters. Instead they were trying to press on- it was idiotic, and uncharacteristic. It was, in fact, positively Imperial. What’s really going on? She wondered.


The instruction was given; ionise the carrier. Not unreasonable- until one bothered to wonder what it was still doing there in the first place. It should have released it’s fighters and jumped clear immediately; ideally should never have bothered to enter the system.

If it was waiting to retrieve the damaged and disabled, or to give covering fire to the rebs in the melee, it was making a possibly terminal mistake. Not that there weren’t more than enough damaged and disabled.

The X-wings were the only possible problem, and the Avengers were concentrating on them too. The shuttles were spraying fire at the remaining Y-wings- the NTBs and HLAFs were scattered, mostly actually exploded.


We’re running out of targets, she thought-and that was when the second string of brilliant white emergence flares appeared. Close to the planet, but not within the point blank range the admiral had been anticipating.

They had evidently decided not to make a crash descent off the planet’s mass shadow, sparing the stress on their hyperdrives that they were going to need to run away with later- a real contrast with the prime attack force who seemed to be happily throwing their lives away.

It looked as if they were trying to get a tangential angle on the orbit so that they could fire up at the staryard without hitting the planet- but also so that defensive fire at them wouldn’t hit the planet beneath.

Now that was rather more like the behaviour of a typical rebel force. They were also rather more effectively armed for antiship work than the slow, expensive, flaringly obvious standard D torps.

Instead, they had brought a quartet of kamikazes. Three of the narrow, triple-cylinder hull Ghtroc freighters, manoeuvring clumsily enough to indicate they were very heavily laden, one lighter, faster space yacht howling out ECM to screen them on their attack run.


The fighter element was a mixed squadron of X-wings and R-41s, the fighter bomber element a mixed squadron of Shobquix Gauntlets stripped down for extra speed, T-wings, and the peculiar M-wings they had encountered earlier.

By the time they had their bearings, the scratch Imperial fighter force, the not-too-badly-pissed reserve, was already converging on them.


Black Prince’s flight group took the stated position that if you had to rely on concussion missiles for antifighter work, you needed more time in the gunnery simulators. The launchers on almost all of them carried standard B torpedoes, light-medium antiship.

Just right for use on kamikaze light freighters, although a shade too weighty for tracking T and M wings. The TIE Bombers each fired one torp at one of the Ghtrocs, and all of them took another shot at the star yacht. The Starwings started a web pattern, one shot at each of the ship targets.

The Bombers scattered after that, looking for a corellian fighter unit to hide behind. Attack was one thing, but they were no match in a dogfight for any of the attacking craft.


Not that the rebels had the time to spare. Apart from being boggled by the running fight already underway, and who was that formation who were broadcasting- spectacularly indiscreetly- rebel ID?- there were a couple of hundred Corellian fighters charging in their direction.

‘Kriff. I think they’re genuine.’ Lennart realised. ‘Full power barrage jamming on them now, and helm, engineering; is there anything that’s actually going to fall off if we disengage from the shipyard?’

After a couple of moments, the response came back from the liaison officer ‘Ninety seconds’ warning to lock down and seal, and we’re good to go.’

‘Consider it given. Helm, I’m going to want to get angle here- when we’re clear, take us down to just over the planetary shield- sensors, you’ll need to watch for fluctuations. Point defence, any shots you can safely take, do it- LTL, any of the incoming C and D from the outer battle you can reach, priority one, those things, priority two.’ Lennart ordered.

He wasn’t worried about them, he was worried about the second wave of Imperial political action forces. Although four light freighters packed with explosives counted as a threat, they were less dangerous than the politics. And they might be persuaded to explode very usefully.


The rebels were a local force formation, and in this sector that was saying something. They were good- after they got over the shock they got the tactics right, even under the jamming beams.

Stay closely packed for long and mid range antimissile fire, make the shooting as easy as possible for the escorting fighters- then starburst to avoid fratricide, the bombers break wide and then reform in a distant escort to strafe the ship and cover the kamikazes on their way in, the fighters do the only feasible thing against such numbers- charge.

The X- wings and R-41s headed straight into the cloud of Corellian fighters, trying to create a confused, close quarters furball that would leave the defenders too tangled and too afraid of collision and friendly fire to go for them.

That was the theory; more likely, it would cost the cocky, confident Corellian Navy pilots a lot of friendly fire casualties as they refused to listen to the odds and took shots and jockeyed for position anyway.


Behind them the torpedoes arrived, and showed the difference between a regular and a veteran, if hung over, unit. A regular unit would have locked and launched as per the book; Black Prince’s fighter wing went a step further.

Knowing the sensor picture was poor and likely to get worse, both sides running intense jamming, the TIE bombers launched at a point ahead of the targets’ predicted tracks with instructions to turn and close head on.

If the target freighters tried to bore on in on shortest path minimum time, or modest evasion, the torpedoes would probably still hit. The drawback to that was a relatively stable, easy target in the terminal stages- which is why the better- instrumented Starwings fired on standard interception approach, covering that possibility too.

The Gauntlets were effective antimissile craft, turreted lasers and an effective fire control system, and they naturally attracted the majority of the attention- and fire- from Squadron Leader Jandras’ scratch force of Hunters and Interceptors.


He felt like one giant bruise; for a moment he thought the g- compensators were fluctuating, but no, it was natural, he really did feel that bad. He had been at the bottom of a scrum, fallen off a speeder, been landed on by one, been jilted and shot- a kriff of a day. He was in an ideal mood to kill somebody.

The Gauntlets engaged the missiles, killed a couple of them but had to pull their fire back to protect themselves; the Hunters and Interceptors shot into the formation, killed one, crippled the other- it limped away, until a long distance shot from one of the Corellians finished it.

The other two spun round, danced on evasive, closing flight paths- the Gauntlet was surprisingly agile for such a large, heavy fighter, but not fast. They couldn’t control range, and the Imperials chose their distance, S- turning to keep the separation that suited their heavier guns and lighter hulls.

Aron was sure he got one himself, firing grouped laser and ion shot- took a glance from it’s lasers in return, which sent the universe spinning for a while and his stomach nearly revolted, but he rode the spin, turned it into an evasive move and by the time he recovered he had missed the fourth go up.

One of the Interceptors had half a wing panel shot through but was still flying; good, because the T and M wings were abandoning their bomb run and moving to engage.


The torpedoes started to reach targets, and both sides for a moment held their breath waiting to see if there was anything left to escort or attack. Flare, flare, massive flare- hits and a secondary detonation; three impact flares and a long pause, then another bright blast; two more detonation pulses. Two destroyed, one damaged.

The damaged one was the yacht, the command/escort ship. Flight control was yelling, kill it, kill it- but the single remaining kamikaze went on to full overload thrust and the yacht turned to flee, one side molten and shredded by blast but still functioning.

The kamikaze seemed to elongate itself out, beginning an entry run to hyperspace as a terminal approach, depriving the gunners of valuable time- then there was a white streak from the destroyer and the explosive laden freighter seemed to fold in on itself, and detonated.


On the bridge Lennart said, calmly, ‘Damage control team Port- 80, yes? Tell them well done for now, we’ll write up a citation later.’

‘Expensive and inefficient.’ The observing rear- admiral disagreed. ‘It could have been resolved by conventional means- it is unwise to give away too many of your tricks too soon.’

‘They read the situation well and reacted with considerable presence of mind. Fire with fire, lobbing an escape pod “down the throat” of an onrushing rebel ramship- especially one against the backdrop of a fighter melee where unrestricted defence fire would have cost us and the locals casualties? You don’t think that sort of quick thinking is worth rewarding?’

‘As it happens, I do.’ Thrawn said, magisterially. ‘I simply have little confidence in your sense of values. Most captains would have leapt to the automatic assumption that the escape pod was launched by someone who was, in fact, trying to escape.’


Some of the Corellian fighters were peeling off trying to get in on the fun- more like driven out of the melee around the rebel fighters. Fine, just as long as they displayed some sign of basic caution and awareness.

The outer battle- there were only drifting survivors left. Most of the troop- capable ships had been loaded, an acceptable hazard for the stormtroopers in them, and they were reeling in the ionised and the crippled, already boarding the ‘freighter’.

Their own losses were four Starwings destroyed with one pilot, three Avengers and two pilots, one stormtrooper transport crippled- the dead Starwing pilot had rammed an ARC-170 off the transport’s tail.

The “rebels” hadn’t been that bad, but they had just been up against too many turreted long guns on hard- target small craft, and fixed long guns on heavy fighters for that matter.


‘Skipper, the boarding team.’ Ground forces liaison reported.

‘Private to me.’ Lennart authorised, and took it on his earpiece. ‘Go ahead, BC301.’ He said, guessing that it was the commander of the detachment that would be calling- anything normal would go through normal channels, anything worrying or off beat would be reported by the team commander in person.

‘Sir, we have the bridge and the main computer, but this really doesn’t feel right. I know the ship’s supposed to be a very recent capture, but it’s too orderly for that. Everything’s too well arranged, no sign of changeover. I’m sure this ship has been in the hands of people with a sense of order, continuously, for some time.’ The stormtrooper captain reported.

Lennart didn’t even bother trying to lie to the ground force officer. ‘You’re right, something dubious is going on, and it shouldn’t be discussed outside a sealed, controlled environment. You’ll be debriefed when you return to the ship.’

‘Yes, Sir.’ BC301 acknowledged, and was about to close the channel when Lennart had an idea.

‘Moment. In the interests of dubiety, holocam everything the way it is- then scruff it up a bit. Make the interior of the ship look adequately rebellious. There are a limited number of people who need to know this, and it would only worry the rest.’


Corellian fighters and Black Prince’s own point defence were engaging the torpedoes coming in from that battle now. The fighters were behaving like amateur splatball players, all of them in a pack chasing for the nearest target and spraying it, which did the destroyer’s fire no good.

The destroyer’s LTL were firing barrage cones around each of the missiles in turn, filling the space around one with sufficient concentration of shot to guarantee a hit then switching to the next target, but the Corellians kept wandering into the line of fire.

‘Black Prince Actual to Corellian fighter coordination; we’re tripping over each other, we’ll take the ones that are bearing direct, you cover the flankers.’ He said on external comms, and nodded to Wathavrah. ‘Assume some sense on their part.’

Less than fifty missiles had been launched at the dock and at the world underneath; that should have been do-able, but even one leaker would be a potential tragedy. In theory the shields could take it, but better not to put them to the test.

Assuming sense on the fighter pilots’ part was an elastic order to give, and one that required judgement to receive; roughly translated it meant try not to kill them too badly. Pick incoming torpedoes that were least encumbered by chasers and take them first, give the fighters time to scatter, and any that still thought they could do a better job than sixty LTL, hell mend them.

One of the corellians tried to trail a missile so closely he couldn’t manage not to hit it, failed to hit it anyway and was swallowed up in the cone of LTL fire, another was clipped and managed to eject. Tragic but better than teraton- range hits on the yard.


The missiles were dropping off the scan rapidly, despite hiccups- the few remaining rebels harassing the antimissile effort and scoring a couple of kills, the defending fighters rounding on them whenever one became distinct enough from the swarm of their own craft to target.

‘No prisoners’ would have been a useful order to be able to give, but the Corellian Navy wouldn’t have accepted it even if he had been in chain of command. The rebel survivors would have a lot of questions- such as, who were those loonies out in the midsystem?

The clean up operation from that would be fun, especially given Lennart’s current relations with the press and the ISB. Still, that would be the last thing to do.

‘Helm, those ninety seconds, are we sealed down yet?’ he asked.

‘Aye aye, captain.’

‘Com-Scan, anything in hyper, any sign of that second wave?’

‘Not distinct from traffic yet. There are numerous contacts which left hyperspace to reorient after the word of the attack, some heading towards and some heading away, there are three fighter units inbound which could be Corellian Navy or political action unit, we can’t be sure until they reenter realspace.’

‘Show me.’ Lennart said. They pulled up a holodisplay with the surrounding space and the known ships nearby, highlighted the three most probable, and he looked closely at it, thinking. ‘Which is the closest to the Ghorman’s line of approach, show me that- focus and track, see if you can get a predicted end point.’ Lennart ordered.


‘That would be this crowd here, estimate one reinforced or two squadrons. From the energy they’re carrying I’d say yes, they do intend to come fairly deep into the well.’ The senior com-scan officer present said.

‘Helm, disengage now and take us down to just off the shielding. Comms, warn the fighters off, gunnery take the last three missiles, scan light off the blip enhancer- draw them towards us.’ Lennart ordered.

The corellian fighters were tripping over each other to get the last three; seconds from impact. One of them, heading for the yard, diverted towards Black Prince- there was enough shielding up to take the blast. The other two, the point defence turrets sprayed fire at, caught and detonated kilometres off the planetary shield.

‘Emergence imminent, small and sharp, fighters, where are-?’ Com-scan thought aloud, but didn’t forget to mark the predicted emergence point.


‘Helm, give me fifteen hundred dead ahead.’ Lennart ordered; the emergence point wasn’t where they were expecting, not where that made sense, at all. ‘They expected us to move out to meet them, the second emergence was supposed to be behind us.’

Black Prince accelerated out of the shadow of the staryard, and opened a line of fire to where the emergence point was supposed to be, a handful of seconds ands a handful of kilometres- but as the second “rebel” strike force emerged, X and Y wings, they were in the gunsights of sixty light turbolasers and sixty fighter point defence turrets, pointed on and ready.

They could reconstruct the enemy battle plan later, after they had blown them up. The political action unit scattered, but not far enough and not fast enough- a hundred and twenty guns chasing twenty- four fighters. Not good odds.

The string of fireballs as the overloaded fighters were caught and shattered and their ‘authentic’ high yield low stability ordnance detonated looked more like a fireworks display than a serious operation of war.


The rear-admiral looked at the sequence of afterglows with distaste. ‘My plan would have been more effective.’ He turned to leave the bridge then added, as if it was an afterthought, ‘I will require full sensor logs and transcript, of course.’

‘Now that you’ve seen me in my natural habitat, so to speak?’ Lennart said. ‘Fine. Helm, take us back to the bay. Flight ops, begin search and rescue, recall the shuttles, I want that Ghorman docked to us. Any word from the planet?’

‘Tactical data links, three intrusion efforts, and an invitation to a party. Apparently the loyalist elements want to thank you for saving their world from rebel marauders.’ The comm watch officer reported, not entirely seriously.

‘Steady, there; if there’s any rolling of eyes to be done on this bridge, I’ll do it.’ Lennart said, feeling the energy of combat drain away out of him at the notion. ‘You sure there’s nothing else out there? No more rebels? Nothing’s fallen off the ship? No riots on deck 214?’

‘I could probably arrange one if you really need it.’ Wathavrah quipped. ‘Problem?’

‘Political.’ Lennart admitted- the rear- admiral had left the bridge, he could speak a little more freely. ‘Sooner or later I am going to have to face a foe far more deadly than any band of scruffy freedom fighters; High Society.’

‘Well, skipper-suppose you think tactically about it? There might not be a better time, this note sounds as if there are elements at least that are prepared to like you, really how much closer are you going to get to being able to do it on your terms?’ Wathavrah suggested, and within his own terms of reference it sounded like a good idea.

‘My terms would involve putting most of them through basic and initial officers’, so they would be vaguely competent to understand what just happened.’ Lennart said. ‘I know, bad plan. It’s not really fair to lumber anyone else with it, either…com-scan, you sure there are no more rebels? Not even a little one?’

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

(segment 2)

For some people, this is normality, Jorian Lennart thought to himself, looking around the ballroom and not entirely believing it.

That ‘some people’, being the assembled civic dignitaries of Corellia, had been through a remarkable couple of weeks; first, one of their most notorious sons had decided to relieve their jails of a rebel prisoner, and the empire of one of it’s senior officers, in one fell swoop.

Then one of their slightly less notorious sons had come home, wreathed in somewhat equivocal clouds of Imperial glory, and had been attacked at anchor, and ended up beating back a rebel attempt to bombard the planet.

Personally, he had been hoping the logic behind this do was ‘Hang the sense of it all, let’s get pissed.’ That, he could have gone along with. Unfortunately, it seemed to actually have been organised.

He was trying to strike a compromise between lounging in his chair and generally slobbing through it like he really wanted to do, and trying to look at least vaguely passable as the kriffing guest of honour.


The seating arrangements, he could have wished for better, largely because he was stuck at a round table with his own immediate family, and there was a thick layer of frost in the air.

He hadn’t seen his father in twenty years; mother, that phone call had been the first time in twenty years. Small wonder that there was a sense of chill; that was probably better than the alternative, because when they did start laying into each other over two decades of neglect it was going to be messy.

His partner for the night, and he thought that was exactly what she had in mind, was a breathtakingly aristocratic young woman, the niece or cousin three times removed or some such of the High Diktat himself.

She was trying too hard, he thought- overdressed, and overacting, he had made a little small talk and she had treated it like pearls of wisdom, she had laughed out loud at the cracks that had his family wincing, but it was too bright, too artificial.

She was playing up to him either to annoy her uncle-three-times-removed, or on his instructions, and neither of those were comforting prospects.


The rest of the table was family. Alrika had brought a deep-tanned man introduced as her husband, who was practically twitching with nerves and bluffing confidence in the face of a senior Starfleet officer.

Garrett had a tall, coolly poised, middle aged aristocratic lady who was looking at the diktat’s niece with almost as much cold disdain as Jorian Lennart felt, but both of them could sense the disquiet in the air.

Either it was a disastrously bad place for a reunion, with a thousand witnesses, or it was the best possible place.

They were a strange looking brood, hardly appeared like family to the outside observer- and Jorian had his own notions about that, and was trying not to air them in public.


Aldrith Lennart was the height of the brood, a man who looked, now more than ever, as if origami could be committed on him. He was lean, ridiculously tall, and built like a set of cantilevers, long- headed, sharp eyed, with a full head of grey hair. He might be the only one who was enjoying this.

Tamora Bharnart-Lennart, the professional athlete turned coach and now apparently budding committeewoman, was a different shape entirely, compact and better balanced, stronger and fitter than most of the people in the room a quarter of her age.

Alrika took after her mother in bone structure, but she had more curves on top- somehow, the hard- muscled athlete and the skin and bone biomechanic had managed to produce a daughter best described as pleasantly plump. It was deceptive; there was no fat at all on her intellect and her will to get ahead.

She had inherited at least a little of her father’s outlook on life, though; normally glibly sociable for surface appearances’ sake with an underlying look of professional, ruthless determination about her, there was occasionally their dad’s mad twinkle in the eye.

He had once told his children, after some dispute over toys or some such while they were very young, that they should grow up soon, because “I’m a scientist. That means I get to play in a sandbox as big as all creation.” He hadn’t mentioned the equations, of course. Not then, anyway.


There was Alrika’s husband- of seventeen years, apparently; no wonder I hadn’t noticed, Jorian thought, I was on trial for my life round about then but you’d think at least I could have managed to notice my kid sister get married. Evidently not.

He was in a formal suit that was apparently brand new, and certainly not as poorly fitting as he was trying to pretend it was to excuse his fidgeting. She had chosen him over objections, Jorian understood, as he was an ‘independent’.

Something quite rare in their day and age, the one ship large freighter company- most of them had been bought out by the big lines long ago. He owned an AP-300 converted asteroid mining ship, not fast, but built to take a battering and with decent capacity, the closest civil equivalent to the Star Galleon.

Officially, his nose was clean, but that’s not what his body language was saying. Jorian had something he wanted to talk to him about, later, if he could get the man to stand still.


Garrett was in theory a landscape gardener, but from the talk between him, dad and Alrika, Jorian gathered he had gone vertical- started absorbing his own support industries. Custom lifeform design was mentioned, and he apparently wasn’t that far off full- blown terraforming.

To test the water Jorian had said ‘You could make a fortune breeding new bureaucrats for the Empire. Just start with an artichoke-‘ just to gauge the depth, if any, of pro- Imperial sentiment.

They - except the diktat’s niece- chuckled, nervously. He had sounded too much as if he actually meant it.

Garrett’s partner was old money through and through, black haired, violet eyed, coolly poised, and partly responsible for the layer of ice in the air. Tamora had been glaring intermittently at her son- as if to say, why haven’t you got formally married yet?

Objectively, Jorian Lennart could quite understand why anyone with a name and number of their own would want to avoid being officially tied to this family which seemed to be composed entirely of black sheep.


She was also apparently a bit of a pacifist, from the way she was sneering at her brother-in-law’s full dress uniform. Jorian could hardly object to that, considering how frequently he sneered at it himself. Never mind frightening simplicity, this was the full bells whistles and knobs-on shiny suit, braid and ribbons everywhere.

I look like something out of comic opera, he had thought to himself getting dressed; then again, isn’t it supposed to? Sort of ‘go on. Laugh. I dare you’?

The rest of the room was full of assorted dignitaries, some with more natural dignity than others. It was supposed to be a gala ball, with food and entertainments. An invitation had been extended to ‘all’ his officers, evidently he was supposed to understand that was only out of politeness and he wasn’t supposed to turn up with all six thousand middies and above in tow.

Expecting to be quite literally bored stupid- into thinking about doing or saying something incredibly tactless- he had for a moment been seriously tempted to take them at their word.

In practise he expected gatecrashers, probably from the fighter wing, and hopefully Brenn later on, but the only one he had brought was the one who was absolutely, infallibly guaranteed to get himself into trouble, Gethrim Mirannon. His record was starting to look too shiny, it was time for him to blot his copybook again.


Jorian was expecting an interesting disaster from that direction in due time. An attempt to turbocharge the ovens, maybe. Too late to serve as a distraction now, as Tamora started the incrimination ball rolling. ‘So when are you going to introduce us to your daughter and son-in-law? To her mother, for that matter?’

‘For that to happen I’d need two jail breaks and a resurrection.’ Jorian Lennart said, matter of fact. ‘She was killed in action, Second Coruscant, before she could tell me about Rafaella.’

‘When you dropped out of the University of Coruscant we lost contact entirely.’ His mother chastised him. ‘You let us think the worst, informed us of nothing. We didn’t even know you were in the navy until we got a next-of-kin form.’

‘Well, I don’t recall you exactly busting a gut trying to get back in touch with me. You let me drift off into the wild universe without so much as a holonet ping- I felt as if I was completely on my own, running free. The way you had always intended.’ Jorian counterattacked.


‘Jorian, you are talking to your mother.’ Aldrith reminded him.

‘I know, but this place reacts badly with me, and I’ve had to do too damn’ much fencing around too many issues, I’m in the perfect mod for ugly truths.’ Aldrith started to smile at that, but it vanished quickly when his son said ‘For instance I need to talk to you about your downstairs lab.’

‘We do not mention that in public.’ Tamora said.

‘Best possible time and place; having an audience might be the only thing that prevents me disowning you.’ Jorian snapped back.

‘It doesn’t work that way round.’ His brother pointed out.

‘Want to bet?’

‘Oh, Jorian, I had hoped that even after all this time we could manage to talk in a reasonably civilised manner.’ His mother scolded him.

‘For a standard of civilisation that includes search and destroy ops, we’re not doing too badly.’ Jorian pointed out. ‘Besides, the only thing you ever taught me about civilised behaviour was how to smile gracefully while pounding somebody’s head into the ground.’

I hope I taught you a good deal more than that.’ She said, archly.

‘I dare say I owe the foundations of my reputation as a devious, twisted, malicious bastard to you…actually, I do have to do some politics tonight, and I’ve just spotted someone over there that I really have to go and irritate.’

He stood to leave the table, started threading his way through the other tables and the knots of people mostly still standing and gossiping around each; Tamora turned to her husband and said ‘Did we really raise that much of a monster?’

‘He’s his mother’s son, all right.’ Aldrith agreed.


He threaded his way through the tables, acknowledging people vaguely, heading for his target. The person he intended to annoy was sitting with Linder Bertalan, the journalist he had nearly minced earlier.

The journo got the first quip in. ‘Ah, Captain Lennart, the hero of the hour.’ He said sarcastically.

‘If you could only promise that it would be over that soon; I’m not really a natural party animal, you know- hardly even a parade ground animal.’ Lennart said, trying to distract him and put him at his ease. He added, only half joking, ‘Then again, who’s going to believe a journalist’s promises?’

‘For a man in the public eye, you have a remarkably jaundiced view of the press.’ Bertalan pointed out.

‘I should certainly hope that a man as highly paid as yourself would notice that. Jaundiced, choleric and possibly sanguine- You’re what, mid- thirties? You don’t have an adult memory of the days of Pittin News and HNN- opinions for sale to the highest bidder, and all protests of integrity meant was that the price hadn’t been met yet.’ He wasn’t joking at all now.


‘Different days, different times, different standards.’ Bertalan pointed out, wondering what the hell Lennart was getting at, why he was being deliberately- couldn’t possibly be anything else- antagonistic.

‘A New Journalism, for the New Order? I’ll believe it when I see evidence of it. You behaved exactly like an old school typist for hire.’ Lennart said, trying to hold himself back. He only meant to simulate anger, after all.

‘Are you accusing me of-‘

‘Of being a slithering leech, who thinks nothing of intruding on the private grief of a noblewoman and landholder of the Empire, and the mother of one of my pilots? Of being carrion? How can I accuse you of these things, when they are plainly self- evident?’

‘I’m not one of your men that you can casually upbraid, I’m a member in good standing of the imperial journalists’ association and a card carrying member of the New Order party.’ How often was he exposed to the real contempt of the people he reported on? It was a common currency, but he usually had more insulation than this.

‘More’s the pity, I might be able to knock some sense into you- and you do those institutions no credit by your presence. I know you’re looking surprised, but a formal event requires a more formal style of condemnation.’ Lennart twisted the knife a little.

‘You’re a renegade, a loose cannon. There’s dirt on you.’ Bertalan said, trying to sound cool and determined, only managing to make it sound as if he was hiding panic.

‘Get in line.’ Lennart snarled at him, and turned to leave. That was part one. Annoy the bastard badly enough to get him digging- and through that find out exactly what was common knowledge about his own condition, or at least what the common lies were.


That and it slid elegantly straight into part two. He turned to the other man at the same table, the prime object of the exercise. ‘I’m sorry this had to happen in front of you, but I’m sure as his editor this isn’t the first time, mr- Dennel-Vath, isn’t it?’

Give him his due, the editor totally failed to flinch, showed no reaction at all, not even when he was addressed by the actual name he was born with, the one that only ever appeared now in the ‘to’ column of the scandocs.

‘I’m sorry, you seem to have me confused with someone else.’ He said calmly. It was a stunningly logical place to put a spy, inserted as an editor for a crack news team; it was legal, legitimate, above- board and gave him access to almost all the news, including the bits that weren’t fit to print.

Even the Ubiqtorate sometimes managed to leave identifiable patterns, and one of those was that their field operatives were generally as good as it got. It simply wasn’t possible that they wouldn’t have an agent involved somewhere, and extremely likely that it was someone senior in the information trade.


‘Really? Ah, well, being mistaken for one of the sharpest news analysts in the Corellian sector should, unless you’re blood rivals, make you a little happier than that.’ Lennart prodded, enjoying the agent’s discomfort.

‘I know the man by reputation, he works for a private firm, does he not? I consider him a poseur, a charlatan and a rogue.’ Dennel- Vath almost matched Jorian Lenart’s cold contempt earlier, for public consumption, but also confirmed that Lennart was correct in guessing his real identity.

‘A charlatan and a rogue? Seems perfectly adapted to the Corellian Sector, don’t you think?’ Lennart suggested, with apparent facetiousness. ‘No doubt our paths will cross again.’


He wandered back to his own table, apologising to all the people he had just brushed past, exchanging small talk, mainly looking round for any of his crew. No gatecrashers yet, and Mirannon still seemed to be in hiding. Or cooking something up, behind the scenes.

It was a large and impressive do, more so than he really wanted- he heard half a dozen times ‘here, what were those five thousand credits about?’ A simple ‘I’ll explain later, you’re not the only one’ seemed to work- he was probably going to be asked to make a speech anyway.

Wouldn’t that be fun? He was still wondering what to say- he had roughed it out but knew he wouldn’t stick to his notes- when he got back to his own table, and was confronted by two more problems he needed to sort out.


Two personal problems. Inspector deLante was leaning on the back of his chair, talking quite animatedly to Alrika. She looked very unpolicelike, being dressed to, as she thought, impress- midnight blue shimmersilk gown, enough scent to poison a pachyderm and enough glitz and gems to pay for a small herd of replacements.

Not on a cop’s pay, he thought. Interesting. ‘Jorian, let me introduce you to-‘ Alrika began.

‘We’ve met.’ Lennart said, calmly and neutrally- not at all what she wanted to hear. ‘In a professional capacity.’

‘I came by to tell you about your son- in- law.’ She said, brightly, but not failing to notice that Lennart was shuffling round to upwind of her, and moved after him. ‘He’s been remanded pending sentence, Stoneleaf Open Prison, but they’re unlikely to come down too heavily on the close kin of a hero. The police recommendation was ninety days.’

‘Jorian,’ Tamora said ferociously, ‘what is my grandson in law doing in a prison?’

It was the captain of the line that answered her, not the family member. ‘Learning not to be so bloody stupid. He badly needs toughening- and smartening- up.’


‘You have a jailbird in the family?’ Garret’s lady voiced her disapproval- which was shared by most of them.

‘Oh, I’m certain to a tribunal standard of proof that of the ten of us around this table,’ he pretended to pause for thought, ‘how many holocams do you count? How many spies do you reckon there are in attendance, official and unofficial?’ Also the occasional combination of the two, he didn’t add.

The estimate he had been about to give would have included himself among the guilty; his mother, almost certainly, definitely his father, very probably his sister and certainly her husband, probably the diktat’s niece although no doubt she had a variety of escape clauses, unlikely Viktoria, but almost certainly the tenth.


‘And of yourself, lady Lyria, I hope I find you well? Your local acquaintances and associates are being comforting and supportive?’

She, on the other hand- as opposed to Viktoria deLante and the diktat’s connection whose name kept sliding out of his brain- was positively oozing class. Almost so much that he was prepared not to think about why. Almost.

‘Not significantly.’ She said. ‘I have been thinking about what you said to me...’ with a portentous undertone that Jorian Lennart knew meant the intelligence side, but the niece and the inspector bristled at.

Both of them, as if laying claim, pulled up chairs. Kriff, he thought. Alrika and Tamora, his sister and his mother, were looking daggers at each other, Lyria and the inspector were preparing a catfight with him in the middle and the well connected young woman looked about to make it a three way, which would probably suit his crew just fine but made his skin itch.


For a moment, a mad impulse came over him. Tell them everything, he thought. How would that go? Tell them that I strongly suspect my father tampered with his own genetics, to select for force sensitivity in the next generation; that I seduced a Jedi Knight, although I never realised how far she would go for me until far too late;

That the fruit of our union, apart from being so force positive she ought to glow in the dark, and to someone with the right talents probably does, got into enough other trouble that she’s looking at fifteen years for bank robbery, probably consecutively with twenty- five years for knowing too much, unless the Inquisitorius get her first?

That I, personally, am barely staving off the dark side, may or may not have committed murder and treason, and certainly know too much about- amongst other things- His Imperial Majesty’s own far-more-than-a-touch of strength in darkness, and his enemies of the light and rivals of the dark?

That I could sentence everyone here to death in three words, by letting them know that Palpatine is Sidious?


‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid the entertainment will be somewhat delayed…’the announcement came over the hall’s address system.

Oh, good, Jorian thought. A diversion. ’Who or what is the entertainment?’

‘The slashed circle ensemble.’ His younger brother told him.

Jorian had to think back to his youth to recall who they were, and when he did he burst out laughing. ‘Those pseuds? Do you honestly think my tastes haven’t evolved since then? How well did you think paracarbonic postcatastrophist polychromic orchestropunk was going to go down with this crowd?’

‘I think they were planning to do something unusually artistic.’ Alrika snarked. She had been kept awake by her elder brother’s music on far too many nights to have forgotten.


‘Glorious. Excuse me…’ Jorian went looking for the source of that announcement, to find the fool who was pretending- or at least doing a lousy job of it- to be the master of ceremonies.

Eventually he found- was pointed towards by the guard detail he had brought along- a harassed looking man in a suit being harangued by two women.

One of them was dark- blonde, mid twenties, wearing a boiler suit with many pockets- probably a roadie. The other one was tricked out as a circus ringmistress, and was glaring at the suited man as if she was about to use him as rancor nibbles.

Jorian pushed in to the squabble, and said ‘This is the first I’ve heard of any form of entertainment- do you mind explaining to your supposed guest of honour what’s going on?’

The ringmistress explained, caustically. ‘This government issue buffoon, who couldn’t organise a party on the Planet of Alcohol Oceans, stood here with his thumb up his backside while someone walked off with most of the stage.’


He knew that voice; she looked vaguely familiar, too. While the band being robbed was in itself a relief it was also indicative of horrifyingly poor security. Unless…

‘All the AV gear, projectors, holo and plain lume, all the sound, the control pods, the management systems, someone just strolled off with them. I thought you were supposed to have security?’ The roadie shouted, slightly hysterically.

‘We are searching the building, we’ve notified the police, we’re doing everything that we can, just-‘ the MC said, and got nowhere.

‘What, precisely, were the ensemble proposing to do?’ Lennart asked.

The ringmistress answered him, with a slightly mischievous twinkle in her eye. ‘We were planning to produce a light rock opera, based around the soundtrack of your life.’

Jorian Lennart nearly asked her, do I know you? That could wait for later though- ‘Who provided the facts for you to riff off of? No, ask a silly question, it was Aldrith Lennart, wasn’t it?’


‘Your father contributed most of the background.’ She confirmed, and he finally managed to place her.

‘Well, you’re dressed as the lead dancer from the banned holo of “Torturing Animals for Fun and Profit”, that much is obvious, but who would connect that to me- Galactic Spirit. Sam?’

Samayra Aywaren, good grief. ‘The same.’ She beamed at him. ‘Even after thirty years…’ she was about to go on, but noticed he wasn’t paying as much attention to her as she wanted, he was talking to the MC.

‘If my father gave you that, it’ll be about as accurate as the average protest song lyric.’ Jorian stated. ‘You do realise I inherited all my mischief from him? I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, and believe me, later tonight I may try. I suppose most of the rest came from the archives desk of the Corellian Courier?’

‘I thought you people had security.’ The roadie was shouting again. ‘I thought this was supposed to be a respectable venue. I spend five minutes retuning Rion’s biolectrophone, and this?’

‘Well, that leaves the squinty circle out of place…do you have any idea who was actually responsible?’ Lennart said, more than half expecting the answer ‘a very large, very hairy man.’


‘No, we do not.’ Samayra said. ‘And as the tour manager,’ she added to the MC, ‘I demand that you recover the band’s equipment, now, or honour the compensation clauses in the contract.’

‘So you did go into the music business.’ Jorian Lennart said to his old schoolmate. Actually they had been more than that, and they had parted on- no terms at all, really, at that time he hadn’t realised how long he was going to be away for.

He refused to ask his high school girlfriend the obvious question- if you’re the organiser in charge of that shower of has-beens, why are you dressed like the up- front eye candy? The obvious answer would have been nostalgia. Probably accompanied by an attempt to wrench his balls off.

She had been rawly pretty then and the years had been extraordinarily kind to her, she was definitely dressed to impress and they had a history- if I get back to the ship and find someone’s organised a betting pool, heads will roll, he thought.


‘I know what happened to your AV gear,’ he decided to bet on his hunch, ‘and you really don’t want it back.’

All three protested; he added ‘My chief engineer has undoubtedly strolled off with it to conduct some impromptu presentation for the lads from Corellian Engineering- and more power to him, because you really haven’t thought this through.’

‘You’ve changed a lot. That’s shabby, having your people steal my projectors to prevent yourself being mocked.’ Sam berated him; well, in theory she had a point, and interesting confirmation that that was exactly what his father had in mind, but-

‘I doubt he thought about that at all, just acquired them in a fit of absent mindedness; if he considered it, he would have come to the conclusion that it really would be safer and less painful than letting you go on stage.’ Jorian pointed out.

‘Did they militarise your sense of humour? You used to love the circle, you pirated the holo- and I remember you drooling over those dancers and trying to get me to buy the costume.’ Sam pointed out, shimmering seductively.

‘If you can manage to act out some of the scenes-‘ Jorian let himself drift back thirty years. The animals being tortured for fun and profit had been metaphorical ones, pigs (police), bulls and bears (merchant bankers), and the metaphor had run out at that point so they had to have more pigs, or people in pig suits, representing politicians.

All good clean anarchist fun. Although if they were going to redo it now, he thought, they would have to add wolves and vultures for the military, and jackals and dung beetles for the security police.


It would still be a monstrously bad idea. What did she want? Really just the obvious- or some warped, comedic revenge for disappearing on her, three decades ago? That made more sense, even though she was letting herself enjoy it.

She was obviously still wild- child enough to have no idea how much trouble she could manage to get herself, and him, into. He couldn’t let that happen- regardless of how much or how little he owed her, the punishment would be grossly out of proportion to the crime.

‘You know the old, old tag about humour in the military; “If you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have joined”- but that really isn’t the main problem. Never mind that the chain of command takes a dim view of officers who let themselves be taken the piss out of to that degree- it’s much worse than that.

‘Let me tell you something that isn’t in the background files,’ he said, launching on to a war story that still made his stomach turn over. For a moment he wondered why he was telling her this, and realised that- apart from the deterrent effect- he was using her as a measuring stick. He was too close to his family, too involved, couldn’t count on honesty from them.

She looked even better than she had thirty years ago, but more than that, she was willing to talk to him- so far. He needed her as a moral check and balance, and old friend- who could, should have been more than that- of his youth.

Kriff, they had played enough jokes on each other back then too. Let’s see if she still wants anything to do with me by the time I get to the end of this, he thought.


‘When I was twenty-five, I was the senior nav officer of Republic Task Force 2070, prosecuting sieges in the outer rim. There was a nexus world at the centre of a mesh of local civil jump routes, and I had a bright idea.

We could split-second it, jump in a commando transport behind a freighter, ride it in and get enough people down on the planetary surface to sabotage the shield generators. The fleet would already have dispersed into groups lurking just off each route.

At the chosen moment, we would charge in down the commercial lanes, converging concentric attack, arriving in force before they could get their shields back up. Their only rational action would have been surrender.

I roughed out the plot and reported the plan, it got punted up the chain of command until the flag agreed to go with it. And it was successful- up to a point.

The commandos went in, took eighty percent losses but got the job done. Nobody got their timing too badly wrong, the force arrived while they were still reeling, but there had been no way of sneaking enough men in to take down the planetary defence guns as well.

They still had those, and they called our bluff. They decided that we needed the moral high ground, we wouldn’t go splattering full power bolts into an inhabited planet, and they could safely fire out at us.

The admiral decided he wasn’t bluffing. So far so bad, but one of our ships tried a low, fast, high- aspect pass. Get in close enough to make precision shots, move across the sky too quickly for the heavy guns to track. They were wrong.

The ship was a Victory-I named Vervaine, a missile ship- and in the middle of the war, requirements expanding out of all preparation, quality control was always the last to catch up. Really good ordnance should detonate exactly where and when you tell it to, and nowhere else, but there were so many half- assed rush jobs. The Vervaine augured in, and her missile magazines went up…

Through stubbornness and foul luck, we burnt four point eight billion people to death that day, human, nearhuman and neimoidian, left the world uninhabitable for millennia.

The flag officer who ordered it’s an Imperial High Admiral now. His flag captain committed suicide, half the squadron’s nav team thought about it too and the other half contemplated murder. If you can sing the song of that and do it justice, I’ll be impressed.’


All three of them were looking at him with a mixture of horror and disgust. Which was only fair, Jorian Lennart thought, considering that was pretty much how he felt too.

‘How do you cope? How do you manage to live with yourself?’ she asked him.

‘I think about all the worlds that that didn’t happen to, that we prevented it happening to; and some days, especially some nights, it’s barely enough…trust me; whatever you have on me, it’s a toenail fragment of the true story.

That and I work with a force and an ideology that is supposed to be openly and publicly proud of doing something like that. Counts it, in it’s own twisted way, as an achievement. I am obliged to uphold the standards of the Imperial Starfleet, high and low alike.’ He stated.

She had a whip wound round her waist as part of the costume, she looked severely tempted to use it on him. At least she got to follow the path laid out for her, Jorian Lennart thought; but what did she expect of me?


‘That’s one of the worst incidents; most of it isn’t as bad as that, but there’s a lot more. How much of that do you think your audience are going to want to hear?

Apart from turning stomachs, there’s some of it that could turn keys. How much classified material do you think I’ve been exposed to in the last thirty years? Breaches of security have a nasty tendency to involve jail time, and I spent quite a few of those years as a renegade hunter. Just how many true stories do you think your lifespan can stand?’

‘I’ve gone right off you, Jorian Lennart.’ She growled at him.

‘If I thought you were here for any reason other than exacting revenge, I might be saddened by that.’ Jorian said to his ex- girlfriend. ‘Seriously, take the money and run. Don’t perform, just circulate, enjoy yourselves. I’ll get your AV gear back eventually, assuming Commander Mirannon hasn’t turbocharged it beyond all recognition.’

‘What am I supposed to do with thirty superannuated monsters of rock to look after, all keyed up and expecting to perform? Letting them circulate would be chaotic.’ She objected.

‘I’m not paying for a job not done. You had a contract, a short notice, highly expensive contract, and the penalty clauses say you pay us if you can’t get out on stage.’ The MC chose the worst possible moment to try to save money.

‘There’s your answer; get them to lynch him.’ Jorian said, nodding at the MC. ‘Should keep them out of trouble for a bit, and it might even be legal. Attempting to reveal classified material, and all that.’


He wandered off, looking for his chief engineer. The MC chose that moment to be elsewhere also, and the roadie turned to the tour manager. ‘Ah, mom? Who was that- I know who he is, but who was he?’

Sam turned to look at her daughter. ‘He was, hm, he was the one who got away. Stone cold serious, overachiever, callous bastard- how could I resist a challenge like that? I angled for him, and found that he was tired of walking a lonely path, needed to let someone in.

He drove himself hard because he was a believer, in what I’m not sure and I don’t think he was either. A crusader looking for a cause, an athlete looking for a finishing post. When he needed to rest from that, he had a wicked sense of humour, he was a savagely brilliant practical joker; he was so much fun, when he let himself be.

We were together for almost two years, and like a fool I thought it would be forever, but one day he was just gone. Up and left me, his family, his friends, his planet. We had talked about what we were going to do, but I didn’t know he’d made his mind up to go to the University of Coruscant.

Once he had, I know what drove him- that was on, that was up, that was the finish line to this stage. He is his mother’s son, locking on to the goal and sacrificing everything for it. To hold on to him would have been to hold him back.

I kept hoping he would return to me, that he wouldn’t have gone without saying anything unless he intended to come back, but we heard nothing- I actually met your father on the rebound from him, once I had finally accepted that he wouldn’t. And wasn’t that a mistake…’


‘Mother!’ Pyera Aywaren protested.

‘You are the only good thing that worthless cockroach was ever involved in.’ Sam dismissed her former husband. ‘Something else I really ought to blame Jorian for, but- you know, Aldrith Lennart, his own father, suggested that if I really wanted to hurt him and drive him mad, I should pretend that you were his?’

‘You didn’t ask me, didn’t even introduce me, so-‘ Pyera decided not to finish that statement. ‘Do you think he’s really the monster he tried to convince you he was?’

‘Not by his own standards.’ Sam decided. ‘Although I’d say that he was worrying that, for once, he might have lost his way. And that he was certain that to me, he would appear a monster. If I thought he was still capable of it I’d say that was a cry for help.’

‘What about you, mom? Putting on the glad rags is one thing but that outfit- do you actually want revenge for him abandoning you, or do you want him back?’ her scruffily dressed daughter chided her.


The object of their deliberations was following a trail of sound effects, and eventually found his missing man, surrounded by trolleys with various speakers and cameras and projectors piled on top, all of them connected to what looked like a generator backpack for a T- 21.

He was using something that looked like a spare stage curtain as a backdrop for the 2-D effects, and it was showing a cross- section of a Meridian class frigate’s main reactor.

Clustered around him, pointing and involved in about five separate conversations, were a group of about twenty starchily, uncomfortably well dressed men. Corellian engineering.

‘Ah, there you are- the Tarazed Meridian incident?’ Also classified, but only to the confidential level.

‘Yes,’ the huge engineer said, utterly unconcerned about the hundred thousand credits worth of imagers and equalisers and the like that he had just strolled off with. ‘I think I know what happened but I need a second opinion, the deformation, or rather lack of deformation, of the frame around the reactor vessel-‘

Jorian Lennart didn’t even bother reminding him of the fact that it was private property. ‘Essentially we are on peacock duty, here to be seen and gawped at. There’s only so much of that I can stand before doing something bloody stupid. Assuming I haven’t already.’


‘Yes, I wondered what all this lot was doing there.’ Mirannon admitted. ‘Does somebody want it back?’

‘That would fall into the category of “something bloody stupid.” Just don’t overload anything, we’ll need to give it back eventually. Actually…’ an idea happened to him. ‘Can you get this lot up to the main hall?’

‘Of course- but do you think the crowd up there are going to be interested in the mechanical properties of durasteel?’ The engineer asked. He was quite capable of pretending to be that absent- minded.

‘No, I expect it would bore the living daylights out of them and leave you riddled by bad questions from the physics- illiterate, but the alternatives are letting them stew, which would not make us friends, or telling them war stories.

Under other circumstances I might be able to come up with a few no- shit specials, but I feel too besieged to be that creative. Too much would be true, and you know perfectly well the sort of stories we’ve been picking up lately are the sort that don’t end well for the listener.’ Lennart pointed out.

‘Right, you want me to cook up something entry level, not too heavily classified, doesn’t go completely over their heads and doesn’t send them to sleep. Another chorus of “The Wonders of Spaceflight”, then. You know, somewhere in here should be the list of what the band were intending to do, could I mock you mercilessly- just a little bit?’ Mirannon said, mischievously.


‘If you stress tested my sense of humour right now, it would probably fail.’ Lennart admitted. ‘What the kriff were they thinking? Probably trying to make me feel less Imperial and more Corellian, make up for the two and a bit decades of back handed affection I would have got from my family if I’d stayed at home.’

‘After literally painting the yard red they probably assumed you were game for it.’ Mirannon pointed out. ‘I didn’t want to say anything but you have been up and down a lot lately, it’s the F- word, isn’t it?’

‘Fever?’ Lennart said for public consumption, knowing perfectly well that he actually meant the Force. ‘Partly, but it’s a subject I’d prefer not to, well. That and too many pieces of the past, each with their own ingot for the camel’s back.’

‘If this is what going home does for you, remind me never to bother.’ The heavy engineer said, with some sympathy. ‘At least the ship doesn’t have- right, we can do that.’ He realised.

‘Black Prince has come home too.’ Lennart turned the idea over in his mind, decided he liked it. ‘Ten minutes enough for you to put together a presentation on the life and times of an Imperator class destroyer? Take the heat off me and put some of the credit where it belongs. Do you need anything else?’

‘Nah, I have my minicomp, should be able to inflict Death by PowerPresent on them with what I’ve got. Apart from the obvious, anything in particular you want me to avoid?’

‘Just err on the side of levity.’ Lennart said, heading back up to the main hall and wishing it was that easy to take his own advice.

[Vehrec]

Lotsa stuff here, and I for one am loving the prawns at this party. Want one? *Offers a Selonian giant prawn*

Just one question-why were the rebels there? Bad or good timing?

[RecklessPrudence]

Yeah, it always did seem wierd that they gave the B-Wing the autoblasters, not the A-Wing - against something light and fast enough to make hitting it difficult, they'll probably do the job, and against a bomber or strike craft, the A-Wing can outmaneuvre them enough to get behind them and hose 'em down. Part of why I always liked the Aethersprite.

Would it be a similarly good fit to take the basic TIE/In design, forget the lasers and give them some blasters instead? I mean, you could probably mount at least two blasters for every laser, and still not run too hot - might even be able to squeeze some more performance out of the engines with the extra radiator capacity freed up. (I'm talking about at the design stage, not taking an actual physical TIE/In and monkeying with it)

I love the PulsarWing, once they work out the ergonomic kinks, gimme that over - well, almost anything else! Are the LTLs useful against capital ships, once they shift shields to protact against the friendly cap ship pounding them? I mean, you wouldn't be able to get the same one-hit capacity of C and D proton torps, but you could hit sensor & comms arrays, shield projectors, turrets and the like, right? Or would it mainly be useful against lighter ships that LTLs are usually used against, as well as shielded strike and assault craft? Could you wear down fighter shields by having two or three of them fire 'flak' bursts in an enemy squadron's general direction, or are LTLs not heavy enough to actually make a difference/the cut down versions on a Pulsar not capable of flak shots?

Excellent story, ECR, and I look forward to the next installment.

[LadyTevar]

Once again, the paragraph breaks and the sudden shifts in perspective are confusing. First we're with a female pilot, then it shifts to someone else that I had no clue who it was, but he were in a TIE (?). Then it shifts to Lennart and Thrawn, then back to the pilots. I also got confused about the two rebel attacks. Were they all 'rebels' or were some actual Rebels?

It was a fast-paced fight, it was exciting, but it was definitely "Fog of War" for me reading it.

The Political/Family War also had moments of confusion. The Descriptions of his family should come first, as part of their first speaking paragraph, not a sudden mid-text info-dump, even if (it seemed) Lennart's thinking about them. There were also still many places where the QuoteMarks are in the wrong places, making me read over something multiple times to figure out what's being said aloud and what's just in his head. Please remember to use the double quotes " " to show what is being said aloud? Italics also work well for thoughts.

However, the by-play between the family (when I reread it a few times for context) was great. You could get rid of the Diktat's niece, tho. Lennart doesn't need a date.
Unless he takes our favorite female StormTrooper

I am wondering why you pulled this Ex-Girlfriend and her band out of no-where. I see no reason why she'd be there, other than an excuse for Lennart to blow off steam. The whole idea of a band that was popular amongst Anarchs 20-30yrs ago being brought in now to play.........
........... ok, strike that. We still have Alice Cooper playing tours. NM.

Anyway, that scene seemed out of place, even if it did give our Engineer toys to play with.

Did I like the Chapter overall? Well.... It needs more work, imho.

[Andras]

So, does the dress uniform include red-bladed lightsabers?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Right, fielding the easy ones first...

Andras, I don't think he would have brought it, except in a fit of absent mindedness. Remember, he's basically submitting to the inquiry, going through navy channels to the extent of laying himself open to capital charges, because he desperately wants to avoid having to officially stand up and declare himself a follower of the dark side. It's probably inevitable in the long run and he's only buying time, but he can use that.

I wanted to introduce an old friend- who turned out to be an old girlfriend- from his past, because I wanted to see what he was like back then myself, and (somewhat to my surprise) he turned out to be a perfect candidate for recruitment to the dark side. Give the seventeen year old Jorian Lennart the choice he's facing now, and his response would have been 'You want me to sign in blood? Fine...hey, is it OK if I use someone else's?'

His father is probably responsible for planting the seeds of the social conscience he has, and that flower started to open when he was at university really, reaching full maturity after years of military service, and exercising responsibility for the thousands of people in a ship's crew or an academy class.

One of the reasons he largely avoided his homeworld (apart from keeping in touch, vaguely and intermittently, with his brother and sister) was that he really doesn't like the person he used to be- and that arguably, his family raised him to be.


The rebels were there as a followup strike. This is only a couple of weeks- perhaps less- after Rogue Squadron bust Dodonna out of jail; they have comprehensive and recent data, they know there are damaged Imperial warships in dock, a repeated attack would serve the useful secondary purpose of demonstrating- to one of their major sources of recruits- that the Empire really can't control space as well as they like to say they can.

The precise timing- they have some sensor capability, they were aware of the trouble starting to happen, they made a choice- to go in in the middle of it all and hope whatever terror/pirate activity was happening would draw off the defenders, exploit that chaos- and arguably it was the wrong choice.


The PulsarWing's main guns are full length, six megaton dual purpose LTL; the ideal role for them is small craft hunting, bombers, assault transports, armed YT's, blockade runners- up to light corvette, basically. Wild weasel would be a good use, although good luck getting voulnteers for it. And no, even if it was possible to fire flak bursts the key word there is 'burst.' Energy over area- if they're flying far enough apart to avoid collision, they're too far apart for the burst to achieve much. Antimissile work, it might be effective for.

Oh, I can tell you someone who wants fewer prawns; Aldrith Lennart, considering his wife probably beat him round the head with one after that "he's his mother's son, all right" comment.

lady Tevar, congratulations, and let me see if I can dispel some of that confusion. The first phase was the fake rebels, the core of the Political Action Unit, arriving and thanks to timely antenna- twitching, being sandwiched between the Avengers and Starwings. There's no shift of perspective; what isn't widescreen, over- the- shoulder is from Franjia Rahandravell's perspective, until she scans one of the blind shots they took and relays the data to Black Prince.

The second phase is the rounds starting to arrive at the planet- fired from several light seconds out- and the actual rebels arriving in the middle of that, quite literally, and getting promptly jumped by a cloud of Corellian Navy fighters. Aron- not dead, but feeling it- is involved in that bit.

The third and last is the last of the Political Action Unit arriving, a shade too late, and getting chewed apart by the PD guns.

I've mentioned why Sam is there; I needed somebody who knew him when he was an adolescent. And there is Alrika's man, and what he may be able to do- this entire arc is turning out to be more domestic and family- oriented than I thought it would, actually.

[LadyTevar]

The paragraph breaks and the quotation marks could still use editing though

[Vehrec]

I hate to do so, but I have to admit that the lady has a point. Just because I've learned to read around and comprehend them, doesn't mean that they aren't easy for others to understand.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I honestly set out intending to write a short chapter- the problem is that most of the typesetting has to be done in the post window, it's no use doing it in word- so, something compact enough that I could go through it and chop and change, highlight, italicise internal monologue, all that jazz.

What came out is so monologue rich I'd have to put half the damn chapter in italics. At least this one wasn't spaced out at the last minute. Do you want more space, more separations, less?


Hull 721 arc 2 ch 11

It was late, something around two in the morning, and the weaker spirits had long since fallen away, suppressed by the stronger- alcoholic and otherwise.

Not that much, for a teenager or student party animal, but making it that far was a triumph in itself for middle aged fleet officers and their relations. Lennart knew there was a part of him that had never finished growing up, and by kriff he was relying on it now. He certainly didn’t want to turn to the available alternative.

There had been the periodic arrivals of reinforcements he was expecting; the expected gatecrashers had turned up, plus a few extra, and there was a situation there he would need to sort out, deal with that later, Lennart thought.

Some of the intruders had been music fans- if that wasn’t stretching the definition too badly- and the site security had been pathetically porous. Not so the legion, and there was a room full of teenagers, some of them pushing fifty, under detention for anti- Imperial sentiment somewhere in the basement.

That would be an interesting public relations disaster, and might take some smoothing over. If I want to be able to try my enemies in the court of public opinion, he thought, I can do without this.


Brenn had showed up, briefly, in the company of a woman in Corellian Navy uniform; he had disappeared before they had a chance to talk much, which on reflection really wasn’t surprising.

If he had been less agitated himself, and if he had thought his navigator was capable of taking in advice at that point, Lennart would have warned his left- hand man to beware of honeytraps, but by then she was basically holding him up.

The Corellian command qualification course was regarded with equal measures of respect and dread the galaxy over, demanding and exhausting, and Brenn had muttered something about “not letting the side down.” That was good news for his commanding officer but bad news for his physician.

It was obvious he was driving himself extremely hard. He wasn’t trying to meet the demands of the course, he was trying to excel, and not so much burning the candle at both ends as firing a blaster bolt down the length of it.

It was probably too late to tell him about the metaphorical birds and bees, or more accurately rocks and shoals. If he didn’t know it by now, he never would- or allowed himself to believe that he didn’t know it, that was the real danger.

‘Pace yourself; don’t peak too soon.’ Lennart had advised him, and let him go before Mirannon could tell him that he looked like dreck. The course itself wasn’t a problem, but there was a chance that he would be his own worst enemy. Still, apparently they had a simulated mutiny in the morning, so it was good of him to show up at all.


The fighter pilots he had been expecting had turned up, including those who had just been rotated off alert; they were greeted with wild acclaim- although there were a few that really shouldn’t have been there, as investigation and disciplinary action from their last bender was still pending.

There was a situation there that he would have to deal with later, he thought, but it was how far down the list? Might rise rapidly if I decide I can’t be bothered dealing with my own problems any more and need the relief of sorting someone else out, he thought.

Lennart was still debating with himself whether or not to deal with the first problem head on now, at least before it got more complicated, when that particular decision was taken out of his hands.

Warrant officer OB173 arrived to report. She was in standard white armour, no point being quite that conspicuous- or rubbing it in quite that badly. Her breastplate identified her clearly enough for the purposes of leaving a paper trail, anyway.

The presentation was long over, the band had been paid- and well oiled- and those of them who could still take it, the pilots, and a few of the other naval gatecrashers were playing games on the big overhead display.

She attracted only the odd confused glance, until she took her helmet off to report and uncoiled her ponytail. Which was thoroughly unnecessary, but she wanted to show off.


‘Job done, Captain. The ISB building has been raided again, the night shift arrested for violations of their charter, there’s not a single byte left unturned, and the structure has been left hopelessly infested.’ She said quietly, so as not to advertise the details- although it was a little late to avoid drawing attention.

There was a seam line visible on one of her belt pouches; so that’s where she keeps her field torture kit, he thought.

‘And that makes you happy, does it?’ he said just to confuse her, and watched her start to think about it before adding ‘Good. There’s someone I want you to meet in an antisocial capacity.’

‘The party didn’t go well then, Sir?’ she made as much sense of it as it was really susceptible to, wondered how literally to take it- if it was actually an order- and tried to probe him into giving away more.

‘Well enough that I didn’t need to call for infantry support, although it was a close run thing at times.’ She was a talented actress; she managed to look as if she knew what he was rambling on about.

She even managed to bounce one back. ‘In your world, context is something that happens to other people, isn’t it?’ Good, she even managed to forget the ‘sir’.


‘Don’t ask an ex navigator about frames of reference…follow me.’ He led her through the debris of the hall to the table he had started the night at. Whatever else goes on in that compartmentalised mind of hers, he thought, at least a part of it should be made happy by this; I am, after all, talking her to meet the parents.

Well, one of them anyway. He reached the table- his father and mother were both still there, Garrett had taken his lady home, wherever that was, Lady Lyria had disappeared into the night and Viktoria was somewhere around, but not right here.

She wasn’t surprised to see them; of course she’s studied my biofile, Lennart thought, she knows what they look like, but she can’t possibly know some of the ins and outs. Well, she might by the end of this.


They were surprised to see her, or see any woman in marine armour; different cultures, different rules, and it was no uncommon thing from the Corellian military but not what they expected from the Empire.

Tamora and Aleph-3 instantly locked on to each other, as Lennart had half- expected they would. Dissimilar personalities, but the aptitude, competence, general approach to life- there was a resonance there.

Obviously the arrogant, hard- nosed champion athlete and the disciplined, duty bound trooper had their points of divergence, but there was a similarity of strength- the thought of what would happen if they got on was almost as worrying as them being at daggers drawn.


Lennart looked his father in the eye and said ‘Don’t go anywhere. Mother, Alrika, Fal-‘ his brother in law’s first name, and Lennart paused for a second trying to find an appropriate image- ‘it wouldn’t help you to live, if you had to hear all of this.’

‘What are you planning to do, son?’ Tamora challenged him.

‘I need to discuss something with El Genetico here,’ Lennart said deadpan, meaning his father, ‘that violates a good deal of the natural moral law, several capital statutes and at least one executive order.’

‘And what,’ Tamora said, estimating her chances of being able to claw her sons’ eyes out, ‘is that going to cost?’

‘You want grandchildren, don’t you?’ Lennart said, so matter of fact that she- and Aleph-3- weren’t sure whether it was a promise, an alternative or a threat.

‘I know what you mean- don’t worry.’ Aldrith said, first to his son then to his wife. Not necessarily good advice, and he managed to notice the white- enamelled powerpack and tube, looking remarkably like an early lightsabre, Aleph-3 had on her belt.


They decided to go, but not far; which was as well, considering Lennart intended to have a similar conversation with his sister and her husband later. He sat down on one side of his father, she sat down on the other, pushing her chair back to have room to let the DC-15 heavy rifle swing off her shoulder.

She was trying to understand what was going on, and what the captain wanted her to do about it; and at what point, if any, her duty took over from his wishes. She suspected this was about to become extremely irregular.

‘First thing, do you have a specimen jar?’ Lennart asked his father. Aldrith didn’t even bother wondering why his son thought he might, he fished one out of his bag.

‘The first thing I want is some detective work.’ Lennart said. ‘OB173 here is a clone, and I would like to know who of. Whose genetic heritage are you carrying?’ He put the question to her, not because he expected her to know, but because he didn’t want to talk about her as if she wasn’t there.

The more present in an unofficial capacity she feels, he thought, the less likely she is to react purely by the book- which may be essential, considering I’m about to accuse my father of a crime which is both capital and, worse yet, interesting.


‘We were never told.’ She admitted. ‘Many of us had our suspicions, but as a batch we tend not to keep in touch very well.’

‘I admire the calm you bring that up with.’ Lennart said. She glared at him.

‘You’re really a clone? The journals at the time mentioned the possibility but you could tell they were avoiding speculating on the precise details…are you and my son-‘ he started to ask.

‘In negociations.’ Lennart filled in, sliding past most of the details and drawing a pleasantly astonished look from Aleph-3. ‘Made more complicated,’ he carried on, ‘by the fact that one of the hats she wears is as a talent scout for the adepts of the dark side.’

‘Oh, dear.’ Aldrith Lennart understated.

‘And the rest.’ Lennart said sarcastically. ‘There’s no history of force sensitivity in the family, you know that, so would the genetic engineer of the brood care to explain how I come to have a midi count in the low five thousands?’


Aleph-3’s eyes widened to the point where her helmet would have fallen off, if she had been wearing it. This old man, the father of her, ah, ‘negociatee’, had somehow found a method to select for the Force? To reliably breed sensitives? That could change…everything. Could turn the galaxy upside down. Why had Captain Lennart let her know this?

‘Ah.’ Aldrith said, aware of Aleph-3’s stunned amazement. ‘Am I dealing with my son, or with an officer of the Imperial Starfleet?’

‘That depends on how badly you manage to alienate me in the next five minutes.’ Lennart said with apparent calm, and Aleph-3 at least realised it was because he was sitting on his anger. ‘What were you thinking- besides that, when did you plan to tell me?’

Aldrith tried to talk his way out of trouble, although he knew it was a forlorn hope. ‘You know how very- how extremely rare an active grasp on the force is, and that it’s generally recessive; anyone being a sensitive is such an improbable thing, all appearances of the force are basically one in a trillion genetic flukes.’


‘Except,’ Aleph-3 said, ‘for the copious evidence that the child of two sensitives is more likely to be a sensitive than not, and the child of one sensitive and one not is several billion times more likely than the galactic average to be a sensitive themselves.

‘That and, if I may, listening to you reeling off the standard explanation, I couldn’t avoid the conclusion that you’re trying to bluff your way out of trouble and you know exactly what happened.’ She challenged him, still hardly believing what she was accusing him of.

‘Warrant officer,’ Lennart said, unusually addressing her by rank, ‘Do you mind not trying to put the squeeze on my father?’ He waited for her to absorb that and try to decide if he had any right to make that an order, then added ‘I wanted to do that.’

That seemed to make it make more sense to her, which was not a good sign. To his father he added ‘Apart from being generally complicated, Aleph-3 is also my chief adviser on the subject of the force, being used to hunting down stray jedi. I’m inclined to trust her judgement on the subject.’


‘People have been looking for the genes for the force for a hundred thousand years.’ Aldrith said, wondering if the truth could save him. He had followed his son’s career, in what little Imperial news was reported on Corellia. He had thought he knew what to expect, but this, this was not it at all.

Did a servant of the empire have- were they allowed to have- a conscience, any more? Were they allowed to not shoot their family?
‘The general consensus is that it’s an emergent property,’ he rambled on, hoping to end somewhere that didn’t involve light sabres, ‘a fragile, unstable result of a broad complex of heritable factors.

‘If I could do that, identify the complex completely and fine tune it appropriately, I would need to buy a small planet to store all the scientific awards that would be coming my way. It can’t be done.’ He said, hoping his son believed him.

‘So it wasn’t done cleanly. You took what passes for the best available theory, and threw numbers at it- went through an iterative process, attempt after attempt until you got a promising embryo. How many brothers and sisters did I nearly have- and what did you do to Alrika and Garrrett?’ Lennart pressed on, relentless.


Aldrith sighed. His son was clearly not prepared to let this go- worse yet, he was right. ‘They’re not involved. “No family history of the force” isn’t exactly true; their sensitivity counts are high but sub-critical, upper three, lower four hundreds. Tamora’s genetic pattern and mine added up to that anyway, you see, which was why I…well, you guessed it.’

Aleph-3’s eyes were slightly glassy, she was trying to memorise it all; this was a whole new avenue of approach, it had been politically impossible before but under the Empire, matching near sensitives and selecting their offspring, there would be millions, tens of millions of new wielders, a rebirth of the Force.

Wait, how many of them would turn the wrong way? How many of them could be adequately darkened in misery and hate, and how many would fill the void left by the passing of the Jedi Order, and reach out to the Light? It also wasn’t the way things were going. Winnowing, ever winnowing; fewer and more powerful, that was the trend.


If nothing else, she added to herself, it would be quite the job creation scheme. Wait a second. ‘Are you saying that Captain Lennart is a clone?’ she asked Aldrith.

‘No, no, he was a selected zygote, live- born, and our first born. What went wrong, you see,’ he said to his son, ‘was that we never really, definitively decided what the plan actually was. We realised you had the potential, and also that we had only the vaguest idea how to raise a force- sensitive child.

To bring you to your full potential we would have had to give you away for adoption, and neither of us were prepared to do that. You were the firstborn; having a force sensitive son came second to having a son.’ He said, almost pleadingly.

‘You could have done that without breaking every ethical code in the book when it comes to designer babies.’ Lennart tried not to snarl at his father, and also to ignore Aleph-3’s muttered ‘like father, like son.’


‘We actually thought it hadn’t worked, until, well, until you came into the room with an invisible thundercloud hanging over you. We took samples of course- you left enough bits of skin here and there. I almost thought it had failed, that I had just duplicated the symptoms, but what we heard of your career it seemed as if the Force had to be with you.’ Aldrith said.

After this, Aleph-3 thought watching her man react, I am going to have to find some soft walls somewhere for him to take his anger out on. Or ISB agents’ faces to break, we have those to spare. No, he’d refuse himself that satisfaction- in case it got easier next time.

It was obviously only by a superhuman effort he was restraining himself from literally tearing his father apart, and on some festering, bloody lower level she knew she ought to encourage him to do just that.


What was rather more of a shock was that realising that a part of her, the better part in morals if not in mindspace, disagreed. How did the midnight black egotism of the dark side sit with loyalty and honour, discipline and duty? How many true comrades had there been among the ranks of the sith?

If I am anything at all at the roots, she thought, I am a soldier; an unconventional one, I can pretend to be oh so many things, but the cause for which I wear the mask and make the lies is duty. How does being a good soldier sit with the ways of the dark side? Ridiculously damn’ badly, that’s how. And he is painfully aware of that.

I’ve never really felt that he returned my emotions, which as undisciplined as they were were half- hidden anyway, always rather that he respected me as a personal threat. Small wonder considering how hard I was- am- trying to turn him into a monster. His willingness to face danger is probably the only reason he talks to me at all.


I think I understand the string of one- planet stands that make up his love life now. He’s not a natural tomcat- as perhaps he would be if he turned to the dark side. He’s behaving like a single father, looking for someone who fills the very precise empty space of stepmother to his children, his military family- the crew.

That may also be, she thought cynically- and wouldn’t Dordd be surprised to hear it laid out that way- why the job of executive officer, whose responsibilities are mainly domestic, was the most frequently posted on the ship.

He’s vulnerable now, changeable, mainly because so many of them have left home, and after the various shocks we suffered along the way- Laurentia- so am I. I don’t think he’s paying enough attention to me to realise it, damn him- although I can put a good face on it, he’s seeing me as being stronger, and darker, than I am.

An instant soulmate for his offbeat soul is an impossible requirement, and on some level he must realise it. What would really work for him, she thought, is someone strong enough to break through that expectation, change him and make him accept her. Which if I can pull my masks together into one face…might actually be me. Although, Galactic Spirit, what into?


She had missed several exchanges between her captain and his father; vaguely heard something about enemies and infiltrators and secret police and secret friends, the Corellian jedi tradition and coming of age, and picked it up again from Lennart saying to his father

‘You created a monster- me!- and I am severely annoyed by that, enough to contemplate doing something rather monstrous.’ Understatement for emphasis, Lennart thought; if I can control myself well enough to be drolly ironic, then I’m in no danger of snapping and going feral just quite yet.

‘All right, I’ll concede that we made things stranger than they needed to be- but Jorian, I am your father.’ Aldrith said.

‘You’re the mad alchemist who in hubris laid a terrible curse on his family, of which I am the chief victim and, the dark side being what it is, also probably chief agent.’ He said, noticing with vague surprise that for once Aleph-3 seemed to be reacting badly to the idea. ‘I don’t suppose you have any ideas how to cure the force, do you?’

[Master_Baerne]

"Quite a job creation scheme," indeed! Aleph-3 is probably the only person who can match Lennart for sheer relevant-ridiculousness.

[Kartr_Kana]

Hmm Aleph-3 and Captain Lennart that would be a very interesting couple. Probably can't happen cause they'd end up taking over the galaxy Great installment if a little short, I eagerly anticipate the next as always!

[fractalsponge1]

I thought she was going for Aleph-1 now ...