Hull 721, plot arc the second

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I read Outbound Flight in a library copy years ago, don't have it on me, and I recall being thoroughly baffled by it at the time.

He appears in that more or less fully fledged, confident, in control, disposing expertly of high responsibilities- so why in the name of smeg did he engineer his own exile, separate himself from his people, and accept a dizzying demotion in personal authority and access?

It was written before the prequels, but now we know that Outbound Flight occurred in the runup to the Clone Wars- which puts everything into a wierdly different light. It would have been so much simpler to sign something resembling a treaty, the Chiss would have taken part in the clone Wars on the Republic side, and undoubtedly Thrawn would have done well enough to be an Imperial admiral from the word go. He and his people would have been very much better off for that.

Trying to explain why that didn't happen, why he didn't, for instance, make Admiral of the Fleet and command of Oversector Outer ten years earlier, that involves a fairly high degree of mental contortion. In light of Outbound Flight, his career track ceases to make sense for me- he's too smart to screw himself over as thoroughly as he did.

Oh, and starting late 37 rS/2 ABY. Black Prince is unlikely to make it out of post-refit shakedown before Hoth.

[Vehrec]

I can just see the main crew sitting in a holotheater watching the Millennium Falcon lead half of Death Squadron on a merry chase through the densest asteroid belt in all of fiction. And the NCOs playing drinking games. "Every time Solo drops out of sensor range, you take a drink. Every time someone is an idiot by the book, take a drink. If someone wrecks a Destroyer, BY THE BOOK, finish your drinks."

Also, I have to agree that chapter felt strange. Thrawn was almost surreal, the writing was choppy and formatting once again was your greatest enemy. Your ideas are major-league, but your pitching them needs some work still. Don't feel too bad-my one-shot involving some Rebels robbing a bank has languished for over a year now because I don't even know how to start it. I know everything that has to happen, but I just don't know how to get it done properly. And that's left me hung up for all this time.

[Thanas]

I read Outbound Flight in a library copy years ago, don't have it on me, and I recall being thoroughly baffled by it at the time.

He appears in that more or less fully fledged, confident, in control, disposing expertly of high responsibilities- so why in the name of smeg did he engineer his own exile, separate himself from his people, and accept a dizzying demotion in personal authority and access?

It was written before the prequels, but now we know that Outbound Flight occurred in the runup to the Clone Wars- which puts everything into a wierdly different light. It would have been so much simpler to sign something resembling a treaty, the Chiss would have taken part in the clone Wars on the Republic side, and undoubtedly Thrawn would have done well enough to be an Imperial admiral from the word go. He and his people would have been very much better off for that.

Yeah, but his people are xenophobes and isolationists. The political leadership didn't want any contact at all with outsiders and they also disagreed with him on tactics - preemptive strikes were ruled out. When Thrawn preemptively attacked a threat, he got exiled. So the scenario you propose would make a lot of sense if the Chiss weren't such isolationist screwballs. If you view Thrawn as a patriot, it makes a lot more sense.

Trying to explain why that didn't happen, why he didn't, for instance, make Admiral of the Fleet and command of Oversector Outer ten years earlier, that involves a fairly high degree of mental contortion. In light of Outbound Flight, his career track ceases to make sense for me- he's too smart to screw himself over as thoroughly as he did.

Yeah, that makes little sense, since Thrawn was found in 19 BBY. One explanation I can offer is that Thrawn was Palpatines backup and political pawn - in essence whenever the anti-alien officers needed a bone to be thrown, Thrawn's career was stalled. Still, why it took 21 years for him to reach the rank of Vice-Admiral is a puzzle to me as well.

[jpdt19]

Excellent new chapter. Thanks very much.

As with the previous episode, i find myself wondering what on earth is happening a little, but previous experience reassures me it will all become clear.

Keep up the good work Sir!

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Sorry, not actually a new chapter; I took that lot on board and decided to rewrite it, try to get close to Thrawn's character.
In the process, I came to a few interesting thoughts. Timothy Zahn was essentially writing off the back of the old West End sourcebooks, which means he was using their sense of time and space and military balance.

Even with as much affection as I retain for West End and the fleshing out they did, I'm not- which means that the definition of military quality changes in a few ways, so effectively I need to rebalance him to make sure he lives up to his reputation within my take on the military environment he operates in.

The other thing is that I believe Zahn stated that Thrawn was based on a number of historical and fictional figures, and, well, my opinion of those people seems to be a bit different from his. Generally, lower.

That and trying to figure out how Thrawn and Lennart were going to interact, one less than famous historical pairing came to mind; the fighting team of Davout and Vandamme.

Dominique Vandamme was Flemish, and a frothing lunatic by all accounts with an extremely well developed talent for creative insubordination- a divisional and occasionally corps commander in Napoleon's armies. He was, generally, unmanageable- more trouble than he was worth to rein in, especially as there was frequently method to his madness.

Louis-Nicolas Davout was the only man whose talent Vandamme respected enough to consider him worth obeying, and there are some interesting aspects to Davout that make him a reasonable analogue for Thrawn- or Vader.
Notoriously friendless, a cold-hearted bastard with a brilliant mind, a thorough, ruthless administrator of conquered peoples, an early career in command of special, scouting and raiding forces, more than capable of serving as his own chief of intelligence, a bold and creative tactician on the large scale as he had been on the small- a fair match.

I think this version makes more character sense, and also leaves me better set up for ongoing plot. Some bits are the same, some are shuffled around, the core of it is new. At least with this no longer nagging at me, I can take a fair run at ch 3 and start filling in the rest of the crew.


Hull 721 arc 2 ch 2 Redraft

Thirty-seven hundred days in charge, and quickly mentally running over his record it seemed to Lennart that he had done something about which questions could be asked on each and every one. Probably just fear talking.

He had answers for most of that, but there were undoubtedly holes- somewhere. He couldn’t possibly expect to defend them all in advance, had no time to make up a case, which was why the admiral had said ‘at once’.

Disappointing if not disillusioning that one of the Empire’s supposedly sharpest flag officers had chosen to care more about that than an ongoing tactical situation- but no, he wasn’t just supposed to be sharper than that, he was. He would be keeping an eye on how that developed- and pretending he wasn’t to try to lure me further into error, Lennart thought.

To what end, apart from the obvious? What does one of the navy’s best and brightest really want with someone who has spent a lot of time and a lot of footwork doing my best to appear as one of the navy’s wildest and hairiest? Patronage? Between Rear- Admiral Rawlin and Admiral Lord Convarrian, I’m basically covered.

Am I overstating his deviousness? He has high political links, so, probably, no. Would they send him to do the debrief, to interrogate someone who- ah. It seemed rather more likely, and maybe I’m vastly overstating my own importance, Lennart thought, but that for one odd man out, too slick and too sharp for the good of anyone around him, to be sent to an odd man out who’d just dismembered a political officer sounded highly dubious.

If I was in his position, I’d be worrying about who had it in for me, Lennart thought. Although I would expect anyone who actually was in his position to be sharp enough to have thought at least a couple of moves ahead, into the intricacies of who and why.

Who is there who could expect me to do their dirty work for them, and do something stupid enough to take the Admiral out of the picture? Who could he have offended? Easy answer; everybody. Who would expect me to do that- well, everyone who watches the news.

Quite a propaganda splash that had made; a special agent, special assistant to a privy councillor, convicted on open broadcast of plotting treason and executed, without trial, by a notorious combat animal. Probably.

That part had never actually been broadcast, couldn’t be- the universe at large only had Lennart’s word for it that he was dead. And a large hole in the upper half of the bridge module, something else that was going to need repair, which was at best circumstantial evidence of Kor Alric’s demise. Proof that Lennart had planned it, though.

Take everything that might be necessary- running logs, collective and departmental statements of condition, after action reports, selected personnel files. Bodyguard? Chance would be a fine thing. The backscatter tap of the last moments- the one he hadn’t wanted, that might be invaluable now.

Lightsabre? Hold on a moment- the admiral wouldn’t necessarily be aware that he had the force, would he? Was that a potential ace- could he, as it were, pull social rank, or would that simply be a long and complicated method of self destruction? Probably the latter. Bring it, but don’t plan to use it.


At once left little room for manoeuvre. The flight group had their orders- they knew what they were doing. ‘Ob, you have seniority, so you have all the fun of doing the paperwork. Sign the ship over to the yard, get the first batches on leave, rotate the legion and the wing surfaceside. Back soon. I hope.’

Down through the superstructure to the docking tube- the air and motion retention bubble would be spread once all the transfers out had been completed. Collecting one of the ship’s writers, Tydings. Nominative determinism in action. In theory a paralegal, actually she was the best person to tidy- aha- the semicoherent collection of documents.

‘Have you never felt the urge to act against type, to rebel against fate? To blow up your office in the name of freedom, paint yourself in copier ink and dance through the corridors?’ Lennart asked her.

‘Sir?’ Baffled incomprehension. Or at least enough intelligence to realise that baffled incomprehension was the safe option.
‘Never mind.’ Lennart sighed. ‘Although I had been hoping that it wasn’t just me.’

Through the docking tunnel into the main body of the base, a loading chamber full of people, yelling and shouting at him, cheering and waving noisemakers through the air. Yard personnel, the odd currently undignified civic dignitary, and Goran.


‘Thank you, but I’m still under orders, the Starfleet’s work never ends, and I need to talk to your yard manager.’ Lennart waved at the rest, stalked over to Caldor, grabbed him and led him own the first convenient open corridor, away from the crowd.

‘You have set me up for some prize gotcha’s in the past, but this, this just might have been going too far. Didn’t it occur to you that it might be smarter to play it straight when Imperial Centre’s hatchet man drops in?’ Lennart said.

Goran thought of replying that propriety had never bothered them before, but the reply to that was just too obvious- they hadn’t had as much to lose before. ‘By the time he got here I had already got the party favours and started laying them. He found the paper trail too fast, anyway.’

Goran, one of these days you are going to wake up, look out of your bedroom window and find yourself in low orbit.’ Lennart said.

‘I do that every morning, I live on a skyhook.’

‘I didn’t specify around what planet.’ Lennart snapped back. ‘Seriously, I am in deep poodoo over this, and industrial scale redecoration didn’t help.’

‘Seriously? I thought you were returning a hero, so covered in glory that you really could do with a daub or two to break up the monotony. You’re really in trouble?’ Goran Caldor asked, genuinely worried for his old friend. They might embarrass each other, prank to the edge of madness and social suicide, but when it came right down to it they were there for each other.


‘I put my political officer to death.’ Lennart admitted. ‘It was either an essential act in the service of the state, eliminating him before he could betray us all and abuse his trust, or cold blooded murder in the interest of my own treason. To be honest, it looks iffy enough that it could go either way, the evidence is strong but circumstantial.’

‘So that really was spectacularly bad timing, then.’ Goran realised, trying not to boggle at what his old university friend said he had done. It was extreme- but didn’t he expect him to change?

‘Oh, I don’t know, would a guilty man do something that ridiculous?’ Lennart said, hotly. ‘Only someone with an easy conscience- and no sense whatsoever, in other words a complete innocent- would be that stupid, only someone capable of exerting a negative effect on the IQ of everyone around him could possibly have found enough help to pull that off. I don’t think it fits the profile of a cold- blooded assassin, but with the profiling software they’re using these days anything could happen.’

‘Amazing how young, crazy, daring men grow into neurotic old farts, isn’t it?’ Goran tried to lighten the mood.

‘Amazing? No, essential- consider what dangers to themselves they are, and to the rest of the galaxy, when they don’t.’ Lennart replied, feeling the truth of that statement weigh on him.

‘Ah, kriff. Well, if you need a jailbreak organised…it’s a long way from the Anarchic Reform Movement flour- bombing senators, the actual actions not so much, but the weight of the thing.’

‘Only if you’ve managed to blot the arrest warrant from your memory as too hideous to dwell on.’ Lennart pointed out. ‘You know, if they had been less extreme about it, hadn’t loaded it down with every charge they could think of, somebody probably would have dropped us in it.’

‘Yes, that saved us, in it’s own weird way. If it had been a public nuisance charge likely to leave the team polishing skyscrapers for a few hundred hours, that would just have been paying for our fun and I had a few gags already worked out; but none of them would have shopped us to the cops knowing that it was likely to end on death row.’ Goran said, shuddering.

‘Don’t remind me.’ Lennart said. ‘And to be honest I’m surprised anybody actually noticed, the amount of powder and paint that ramrod-arsed, mealy-mouthed clothes horse wore anyway.’

‘Well, the fluorescent yellow dye was a bit of a giveaway… you do have a plan for getting out of this, right? We’re not talking about mysterious acts of rebel terrorism, are we?’


‘Would it make the record look any worse at this point?’ Lennart said, sarcastically. ‘Were we ever really the vigilantes of the future, the knights of freedom that we claimed to be, or were we just a bunch of delinquent kids who should have been quietly ushered into a padded room and never let anywhere near any real authority?’

‘Well, we haven’t done too- oh, come off it. You should know I’d fail any conceivable tact test.’ Goran said. ‘Although, it was a good crowd. A few burnt out- peaked too soon- but most of us turned into solid citizens, that should mean something.’

‘Yes, it means you and me are the last of the frothing idiots.’ Lennart pointed out. ‘Don’t try to prank the Admiral, it would only make things so very, very much worse.’

‘Ah. In that case, I have a timer to deactivate.’ Goran said, not seriously- Lennart hoped. ‘Any idea how you’re going to do this?’

‘That depends, largely on how much he really wants to know, and what he wants to do with it. He’s political, he’s a player in the great game of public office, and worse, private office. I don’t really want to be other than a naval officer, never really fancied the mantle of warrior- statesman, but he does, and if he thinks I can be of use to him, well.’ Lennart said.

‘I think he wants to know everything.’ Goran warned. ‘He’s been probing into Corellian Engineering’s files, things that aren’t remotely relevant- couldn’t possibly matter now. I’ve been feeding him as much gibberish as I’ve had time to invent, and some of the you-really-don’t-want-to-do-this designs and public submissions.’

‘Yes, well, knowing you, that’s a lot of gibberish- but the ones with the wingtip reactor globes, multiple microzoning, the spinal fixed superlaser frigates, all the bad technical jokes? Why?’ Lennart asked.

‘Because he’s a smug bastard, that’s why. Remember Dean Vandruut?’ Goran said, wincing.

‘No- he was your problem, not mine.’

‘Well, worse than that.’ Goran said, in exasperation, and went on, ‘All brain, no heart, and he’s fooling himself when he tries to pretend to have a soul. His understanding, maybe, I’ll give him that, but his emotional intelligence is so low he has maybe half a friend in the entire galaxy.’

‘How does that work?’ Lennart said, baffled. ‘He’s supposed to be a better political operator than that- if he can’t at least pretend to be sympathetic, that is scary. You’ve just told me he manages to do a passable job of social engineering with half his toolbox missing. What’s he using instead, pure intellect?’

‘Essentially.’ Goran said. ‘See you when you get out, yes?’

‘If I get out in one piece.’ Lennart pointed out. ‘I follow the mouse droid, right?’

‘Only until I finish inventing a cat droid. And then I might want to spend a little time tuning it up to eat Admirals. I was sorely tempted to give him the memory metal whoopee cushion treatment.’ Goran said. ‘Just, with sharp points this time.’

‘If I spot you out of the window with a remote control, I’ll know what happened.’ Lennart acknowledged. ‘See you later.’


He collected his aide, and followed the droid into the admin section, noticing increasing numbers of stormtroopers along the way. Any flag officer had a right to a personal retinue and guard, almost all of them exercised that right, and some of them needed to.

Slightly fewer than establishment, in fact; was that policy? Appear confident- just slightly overconfident, in fact, enough to lure a rival and potential enemy into making an unwise and premature move? Possibly. He knocked, was bid ‘Enter.’

Rear-Admiral Mithh’raw’nuruodo was sitting behind the heavy executive desk, poised, calm, collected. The office was still as Goran had left it- minus the whoopee cushion- and somehow it was the room around the blue-skinned admiral that looked out of place.

He had a flag lieutenant, tall and thin, weak- chinned, not looking at all like an appropriate second for the alien; so the admiral likes to keep a chew toy around the place, does he? Lennart thought. Or was it simply deception?

What is it that he wants? Lennart thought, suddenly angry at being made to play these subtle fencing games. Who the kriff does he think he is, with half a dozen under- the-table special operations to his name?

Careful, mate, the other side of his brain told him, that’s the dark side talking. And you’ve probably just given away a lot more than you intended to, as well as biasing him against you.

Lennart snapped off a salute, not quite ideal but only a severe perfectionist could have found fault. Which the admiral was widely reputed to be. How to play this, he thought. Bluff, misunderstood spacedog? A different kind of animal entirely- a political snake? A man of moderate sense and enormous luck surviving in the fleet despite himself?

Or just abandon pretence entirely and go with the no-technique technique? Dangerous, dangerous- but possibly less so than trying to manipulate the Admiral and getting caught. Still, just being himself was likely to be dangerous enough.


‘Reporting as requested, Rear-Admiral.’ Lennart said, standing at ease- better not to give away the first point.

‘Do you honestly imagine that I have simply requested your presence here?’ Thrawn said frostily, piercing Lennart with a scarlet-eyed glare- or at least, trying to.

The man’s arrogance was intriguing. His career had had it’s ups and downs, one spectacular fall from grace, and the occasional equally spectacular success attended by slow if any movement up the ladder of rank. The rear-admiral understood that thoroughly. He had expected to be dealing with an embittered, disgruntled man, a bile-filled player of the system who had finally snapped at his lack of progress and, as he saw his latest crumb of success taken away, lashed out.

An angry man, with a temper that might perhaps be harnessed. Instead, there was this lunatic prankster, this accidental astral artist, who spoke with many tongues to the billion-eared beast of bureaucracy.

The rear-admiral believed he had understood the underlying logic, but this was another face again; the various identifiable characters he wore when dealing with officialdom were not merely shells, but shells within a shell?

‘What else?’ Lennart replied. ‘You’re not in my chain of command, and my own squadron and fleet commanders have accepted my preliminary report.’ Which was merely an opening gambit, both realised.

‘They do not have the authority to sanction your actions, or authorise the death of an operative of the privy council.’ The rear-admiral pointed out, intending it as a preliminary stage to further negotiations; a sort of showing of the instruments, this is a stick, this is a carrot.

‘And you do?’ Lennart asked, interrupting. He could and should have stopped there, but couldn’t resist adding ‘Nice work if you can get it.’


Lennart’s involvement with a student anarchist movement had been always carried on the classified section of his file as ‘unproven’; Thrawn was now certain that it was accurate.

‘The authority to do so does not exist outside the council itself, but I am Imperial Centre’s appointed investigating officer.’ Thrawn pointed out, mentally examining the methods before him. Which essential approach, the feather or the hammer?

There were so many provocations that flashed across Lennart’s mind that he could throw back as a result of that, and it would be drastically unwise to say most of them. Although not all?

Was it possible to crack the stone face, get him reacting, get the rear-admiral to show some emotion? What would it be if he did? If the whispers and rumours were anything to go by, and it seemed they were, he had no sense of humour, only dry, cruel wit.

Politically speaking, he was an operator, not a principal. He would be an effective high commander, but at the mid levels, no- probably the reason he was still a rear-admiral, he simply didn’t have the charisma to convince everyone around him not to backstab him. Every man’s rival, no human warmth to attract a patron or a following- and his anger, especially, was stone cold.

Which was likely to happen anyway, so what the hell. ‘Good, then you can answer some of my questions.’ Lennart decided to say. Not how it was supposed to work, but singularly little about the incident had been the way things were supposed to work. ‘For a start, why did it end up falling to me to stop him?’


‘You seem to be under a fundamental misapprehension about how this works.’ This particular mask was obvious, the ‘just a simple spacedog’ routine Lennart had run to some of his superiors.

Really, what was the point of engaging with any of the masks? They were all that Lennart could or would show at this stage. They were shielding, simple fakes and poses.

To ramrod through to the man underneath, what tools and what approaches would serve for that? Playing on rank and authority would simply summon up another mask.

Politics, being the man- being- of rank and access, that may not be overly successful either, not without giving more away to Lennart than it would be wise or appropriate for him to know.

‘Oh, I hope so, because at the moment it looks as if it doesn’t.’ Lennart snapped. ‘Let me make this simple for you; I believe I followed the higher order, and put the safety of the Empire before that of any individual within it. The billennia old problem of obedience to conflicting orders.

The book is clear on this one; you go with the senior officer, and when he told me he wanted to kill the emperor, that gave me the manoeuvring room I needed to drop him.’ Lennart stated.

‘Do you imagine you have some kind of special contract with His Majesty that allows you to step beyond the bounds of your position? You are not the only being ever tempted, but you are one of the few who chose to embrace the radical option.’ Thrawn stated.

What was the underlying theme? Where was the hidden motive, how did the propulsive power behind the masks reveal itself, why were they? To hide, or further, what- he had behaved, so very often, like a man without secrets, which was the surest way of disguising that he had any.

Mithh’raw’nuruodo knew that from personal experience; he had been an intensely private being during the first few years of his service with the Starfleet, he had behaved as if he had, and been treated as if he had, far too many hidden things. With extreme suspicion and mistrust. In reality, of course, there were a few.

‘All of that is or should be obvious from the progress of events, so have you simply decided that it is more efficient to let me do your job as well as my own?’ Lennart challenged. ‘Actually, you never did say what you were here to investigate- admit it, you just came for the fuel returns, didn’t you?’

‘As a matter of fact, Captain- no.’ Thrawn said, refusing to be amused. Also wondering just how far the maniac opposite him, or the ersatz maniac, thought he could push it.

‘Your obliteration of an agent of the state, and your behaviour afterwards- most men would have had the decency to go on the run and make the Starfleet sweat a little- are more than worthy of investigation.’ The admiral stated flatly.

The old stone face technique back again, which to begin with had seemed like his best option. Let the loose tongued Lennart argue himself into a contradiction, say something that contradicted what he already knew, and use those inevitable contradictions to pick the puzzle apart.

Unfortunately, the puzzle fitted together too well, and Thrawn was suspecting that that was all it was- just a puzzle, not actually attached to anything of importance. A category of object which did not actually exist, unless they had been purposely crafted to be sublimely irrelevant. How much did the masks really have to do with the man?

Lennart wandered along, shambling from one diplomatic- political crisis to another like a well meaning fool- which did not sit well at all with the credit most of those who knew the man well, like his own flotilla, squadron and force commanders, gave him.

On the other hand, he was obviously more of a prankster than the file indicated- which explained why he could simply not resist the line ‘What, there is a way this is supposed to work- agents of the privy council going renegade is common enough that there’s a defined procedure?’

Lowering the boom on him is like trying to squash jelly, Thrawn decided, but for the sake of the rank and the badge decided to have one last attempt at placing this conversation on a proper footing.


‘No, captain, you will not play this game with me. You committed murder by your own admission, and I have all the authority I need to have you shot on the basis of the evidence before me now.’

‘Investigation to coverup in one fell swoop, hmm?’ Lennart snapped back. ‘Why are you so keen to avoid looking into the actions of a self proclaimed traitor and would- be regicide?’

That and inwardly kicking himself. He had been overtly confrontational with Adannan and that had turned into a near- disaster. Now this- and the rear-admiral was more than capable enough to take the next obvious step and jump to the actual use of force.

If he could recover from being badly boggled in time. ‘Are you trying to sign your own death warrant?’ Thrawn said, simultaneously angry and perplexed. That made no sense at all as a move- did Lennart even have a plan, or was he improvising it all as he went along? In which case it should be easy to steer him.

If necessary, with the blanket assumption that he would do the opposite of what any normal officer would do, and say. No, no, that wasn’t entirely right either; this was the creative process in action, rewrites, strikethroughs and all. He did have an objective, and was acting as if the longest way round might be the shortest way there.

The only possible explanation so far was that he clearly and genuinely believed in his own innocence. To the extent that he thought it was a sufficient defence? Possibly- hard to see how any man could be so intelligent and so naive at one time, though.

‘That is an extraordinary comment to make to an investigating officer. Do you have any proof of my collusion in Kor Alric Adannan’s alleged treason?’ Thrawn said, pushing the point home.

‘At this point I’d welcome some proof that you intend to function as an investigating officer.’ Lennart snapped back. ‘I’ve recently been on the receiving end of official misbehaviour to a degree which staggers the imagination, and I have heard far too many hollow, self-seeking appeals to authority lately.’

Now, how was he going to react to that? The blue-skinned admiral had a job to do, and interests of his own that he intended to serve, but surely he was intelligent enough to realise that there was much more to this business than the official version?

A neutral, competent senior officer would- what? Cool the meeting down, apologise personally and require the same from him, and start again by asking how things got to be that bad. The first words from Rear-admiral Rawlin had been ‘Jorian- what the kriff happened?’

He had got an explanation. He hadn’t been thankful for it, but he had got one. Thrawn was simply too suspicious, too proud of his own intellect, and too burdened with agendas to take that simple a shortcut.


By now, however, he was well aware that he had at best a fragment of the story, and this was still barely the preliminaries. ‘You executed the man set in authority over you.’ Thrawn began again, choosing from a list of possible moves including a direct threat, a caution, a gesture of appeasement towards the judgement of an already much- threatened combat officer.

‘Do not interrupt.’ He snapped, before Lennart could say anything else. Letting him produce yet another evasion would prolong what already looked like an endless stream of them- the chiss rear admiral’s temper wouldn’t stand it. Although tempting, it would destroy the one thing of importance above all else- information.

Being the Man from Imperial Centre was not a winning strategy; that non- cooperation in itself opened up so many more options including summary execution, but that would result in he and the authorities never knowing what had really happened.

What, then, try to reach some form of understanding? It would not be the first time the Chiss had stooped to conquer- choosing exile and Imperial service for a start, although that decision had not yet borne full fruit.

‘You must realise that, even if you can justify your actions, Imperial Centre has excellent reasons to take an interest in anyone capable of that?’ Thrawn added.

‘I take it, then, that I have become unpredictable, from their point of view?’ Lennart said, enjoying the understatement. ‘Then, admiral, I think you might want to ask- who sent you to do the job of pressuring an unpredictable man with a tendency to assassinate superior officers? Setting you up for that doesn’t sound like the act of a friend.’

That was intended to come out of left field, and largely did. The near- human knew perfectly well that Lennart was capable of doublethink, but his unpredictable, erratic ventures into it were capable of achieving at least tactical surprise.

‘Is that an admission of guilt?’ the near- human stalled.


‘An acknowledgement of perspective, nothing more.’ Lennart said, and added ‘besides, Kor Alric would have been happier about being assassinated- he would hate to think that he lost legitimately.’

‘How generous of you to care for the happiness of his ghost.’ Thrawn said, voice dripping with acid. ‘Is this the sort of game you played with him? Twisting his words, dissecting every utterance, harassing him until he snapped and it was either you or him?’

‘Were you aware of his affiliation to the dark side of the force?’ Lennart said, and was surprised to see a flicker of reaction on the rear- admiral’s face. That possibility interested him, definitely. How a non force user could best a force user in a battle of wits, the chiss was interested in that.

‘I manage to maintain a working relationship with one such, without resorting to terminal means.’ And that was a study in divorce; maybe he was simply giving out the wrong cues, but what he thought and what he said seemed to have little or no connection. On purpose, no doubt.

‘Did he ever openly confess to plotting treason and regicide, and ask you to join him?’ Lennart asked, rhetorically.

‘No- he was never harassed enough to make such an invitation and I was never loose minded enough to invite it. Are you alleging that Kor Alric Adannan did precisely that?’ Thrawn asked him.

‘What would be the point of openly reporting a long, rambling conversation with a traitor, which included the traitor’s stated reasons for becoming so?’ Lennart said, picking up on the admiral’s use of the word “alleged.”

‘It’s not in any of the reports because I saw no reason to allow his arguments to spread to the audience that any official report would have achieved. He strung together several of the Empire’s darker and more obscure secrets into his justification.’ Lennart stated.

‘There was no possibility of reporting to someone who did have the competence to hear the case and judge your rebellious dark jedi?’ Thrawn probed.

‘I did report- to Lord Vader’s flagship, no less- that I had been forced to violate the standing orders regarding the rebel Solo, by Kor Alric’s direct command. I hoped that, and the deliberately undisciplined manner in which I reported it, would raise suspicion, but I received no reply. Things simply moved too fast after that.’ Lennart said.


‘I will be investigating that possibility. Although I dread the thought of what you being deliberately undisciplined sounds like.’ Thrawn said. ‘The core of the matter, and the basis of any charges against you, is not changed by that- you had no competence to kill him or have him killed.’

‘Obviously, I did, he’s dead.’ Lennart said, coolly. ‘There simply was no option that ended with the secrets of the state still intact and Kor Alric still alive.’

‘Why were you so certain that the secrets were more important than the man? How did you gain your surety of what he was and was not allowed to know?’ Thrawn prodded.

‘A simple process of comparison. One man- versus something the Empire has considered it worth burning planets over in the past. His personal conduct was that of a tyrant and a charlatan, I am not about to give the benefit of the doubt to a man who makes a hobby of torturing his staff.’ Lennart said, wondering if that still mattered.

The rear-admiral winced at that, Lennart noticed; an unpleasant memory in his own past? Something that he knew, that would not necessarily stand up to close investigation?

‘Oh, and as this meeting is highly likely to descend to personal abuse,’ Lennart said as if it was like the sun rising, ‘let me begin by saying that you are far too far in love with your own intellect. You came here meaning to reason all of this out and then confront me with the hideous truth, didn’t you?’


A number of possibilities flashed through the near-human’s head, at the top of the list having the insolent bastard shot- although that would destroy a great deal of valuable information, not least any detailed account of what Kor Alric had actually been up to.

Besides which, the shifting public faces of the man were a kind of living art. Not a genre that the chiss appreciated; it was too easy to give the audience what you thought they wanted to hear, the interactivity destroyed the purity of the performance, it was like cleaning a crime scene to remove the evidence. Nonetheless, he was in his own way an artist.

What had Kor Alric Adannan thought of him? How had their relationship evolved- how had it come to be that the dark jedi had asked Lennart to join him, and been killed for it? That part of the story, he believed. There were so many reasons why it would have been good to say even if it wasn’t true, but it did have a truth about it.

There was a certain warped, backwards honesty about him, Thrawn decided. A maintenance of the aim, a purity of objective. He would dodge and weave and distort the truth on his way to the goal, but he would make his way there. How would a man of that sort, Thrawn thought, have reacted to a man who regarded truth as a form of sport?

‘I shall choose to regard that comment as the product of post- combat stress.’ The rear-admiral said, launching a counterprod to annoy Lennart. ‘You would describe the truth as hideous, then.’

‘It wouldn’t surprise me at all if you turned out to be right.’ Lennart said, swallowing a gush of bile and calmly returning the provocation. Then, as Thrawn had hoped, his temper flared and some information flowed loose.


‘What do you know about Republic Task Force 771?’ Or, in fact, not. Lennart plucked the number out of thin air as a probing device, just to see how the rear-admiral reacted.

Stated as if it was a genuine fact- and it was tangentially connected, TF771 had been the fast strike elements of 77th Republic Fleet, which had indeed managed to get itself into dire trouble in one of the outer rim sieges- a flotilla of destroyers sent to do a battleship’s job, on a force fuelled hunch.

‘Before my time.’ Thrawn deflected. He had been still with his own people, or in exile, in that period- had read up on the events of the clone wars, drank in as much information on the subject as he could, but the mind can only hold so much.

He was obviously thinking about it, trying to place them, though, Lennart noticed- by slipping him a false trail I’ve proved to my own satisfaction that he was poorly briefed. He puts on a good mask, Lennart thought, but I know. Now if I can prove that to him, and get him listening to my side of the story…


‘Also only tangentially relevant, which you weren’t aware of- you haven’t actually been briefed on the specifics at all, have you?’ Lennart pointed out. ‘You were sent to deal with a maniac- me- without any real idea of what I’d done, how, or why.’

‘Technically, that is attempting to mislead an investigation.’ Thrawn pointed out, largely just for the form of it. He had to recognise that Lennart had a point, and more than that there was now no chance to reason and bluff his way through to the actual truth, now that his target realised that he had little or nothing to go on beyond the news reports.

‘To stang with the technicalities; you’ve already been misled.’ Lennart stated. ‘According to Kor Alric, a conspiracy exists against His Majesty’s life- I can’t prove the absolute truth of that but I can certainly prove that he said it. Who is it who’s been standing up for Adannan’s reputation? Who told you that he was innocent- and set it up for you and me to lock horns?’


Thrawn sat back and considered the situation. If this more than half renegade was right, then he had been played for a fool, which was not something that he allowed any being to do to him twice. Not once, if he could help it.

Assume that there was a conspiracy. It was inevitable that there was, on some level; it was a big enough galaxy. Large enough for even the conspiracy theorists to be right, once in a while. Without trying to feed his own ego, it was an operationally demonstrable fact that Rear-admiral Mithh’raw’nuruodo was one of the sharpest intellects in the fleet.

Who were the prime threats to this conspiracy? The unpredictable lunatic who had uncovered it- and one of the sharpest intellects in the fleet. Inwardly, Thrawn whistled in admiration.

If Lennart was correct, the unknown arch- conspirator had pulled strings to have him sent here to do the interrogation, in the admittedly well grounded hope that the two of them would fail to agree, and the friction between them would destroy any chance of having the conspiracy effectively investigated.

It was a master-stroke; and looking at the lean, hungry-looking, unpredictable man across the desk from him, Thrawn was far from certain that it would actually fail.

Who could have guessed that an ex-anarchist like Jorian Lennart would prove so unexpectedly determined to prove his own innocence to the authorities? Oh, there was a great deal of contempt for authority and a great many tactical lies in there, but the essential whole was sound.

‘I shall, of course, require that proof.’ The near- human said. ‘Leave your deposition of evidence with me, I shall send for you when I have reached a conclusion.’

As much as the theory may or may not make sense, the man was still a scruffy, ill- dressed, off the wall madman. It would not do to show him too much, or any, personal favour. Whoever the conspirator was, he was correct in that at least; they were opposing types of personality, with little common ground beyond their duty.

Which in itself meant that he, or someone within the circle, knew both of their records or reputations well enough to set it up in the first place. That in itself was a connection worth following.

Lennart reached into the stack of datapads his aide was carrying, pulled one out, put it back, selected another.

‘That datapad, give it to me.’ Thrawn said, meaning the returned one.

It was the security system footage from Mirhak-Ghulej’s final breakdown. The one that had involved Lennart talking him out of blowing Adannan up with a thermal detonator.

‘Fascinating.’ The rear-admiral said, once it had finished playing. ‘Some day, and some day soon at that, you and I are going to have to sit down to the dejarik table. Assuming that you are correct and that you remain a line officer for any length of time.’

If? Lennart thought, irritated, but recognised that if he was forced to go all the way out and declare his allegiance to the force, he might not remain a line officer anyway.

‘Why abstract it to a game, why not go all the way to the academy simulation tank?’ Lennart counterchallenged. ‘I can tell you what’s likely to happen, too.’

The admiral gave a faint nod, intending Lennart to continue. ‘When it comes to the art of war-‘ he couldn’t help a slight smile at that- ‘I’m a miniaturist. Also arguably a surrealist. Single ship, line command, mine- more often than not. Larger forces- that you don’t have the rank to command any more than I do- your home territory.’

‘And squadron command?’ Thrawn said, amused by Lennart’s analysis.

‘Would be interesting.’ Lennart admitted.

‘Indeed.’ The rear-admiral deadpanned. ‘You may go; I will send for you when I have reached a conclusion.’



Effectively under open arrest, then. Lennart walked out of the office, the door hissed shut behind him, half the guards waiting outside peeled off to follow him. First things first, find an unused conference room with a com terminal.

‘Wow.’ Tydings said. ‘You really just- Sir, you challenged him to a duel.’

‘A simulated one. And under conditions which I expect to be to my advantage, although so much of his record is classified it’s hard to tell what his strengths and weaknesses are- although the rumours seem to be broadly accurate.

Single ship on single ship- especially with time to work the crews up in our own image- there, I might just be able to hand him his balls on a silver platter. Although there is a rumour that His Majesty has already done precisely that. Whether it’s the species he comes from or just himself, though, his brain seems to work backwards.

The more complicated the problem, the clearer and faster he thinks about it. Trying to outguess him is a fool’s errand- he just lanced his way through years of protective gibberish. The only thing I could think of doing was to confront him with terrifying simplicity. Where’s that damn’ terminal?’ Lennart said, looking around the room.

He found it, sat down in front of it. Couldn’t remember his own home com code, had to look it up.


‘2928a- ah, it’s you. With your talent for making an entrance, son, you should do it more often.’ The iron-grey haired woman on the vidscreen said, a voice full of mother’s love and disappointment, and just an edge of mischief.

Most of the family tended to breed late in life; by Aldrith Lennart’s calculations, if the current generation was an indicator they were about eight thousand years’ worth of genetic drift behind the rest of the human race. Mind you, was that necessarily a bad thing?

‘I know, mum- I wander in and out of touch, disappear for years on end, occasionally pop up on the news doing something stupidly dangerous, haven’t been home since Second Coruscant-‘

‘If you think bringing up your own bad points is pre-emptive self defence, then you have been away far too long. Would it have killed you to write?’ Mrs Lennart teased her son.

‘Some of the time, yes, emission control and security regs being what they are. Part of the time I was just- too deep in the curve. Besides, if I can’t trust you to look after yourself, who can I?’ Lennart said, uneasily realising that he had-

‘Evidently you don’t, considering you sent all of us a form letter and a five thousand credit chip to buy guns and hire bodyguards with. And everyone else you’ve ever met, several hundred of whom called Aldrith and me to try to find out what it was all about. Some of them seemed to think you still lived here. Keeping in touch really isn’t your best point, is it?’ Tamora Bharnart-Lennart berated her delinquent child.

‘Well, you taught me to be a ‘now’ person.’ Lennart pointed out, trying to sound reasonable, and not to admit to feeling guilty. Why signal defeat before it was absolutely necessary? ‘All those lessons about focusing on the immediate, they worked.’

‘I overdid it.’ She said sarcastically. ‘That was also not the way I had hoped to find out that my eldest son had finally stopped gallivanting around the galaxy long enough to perpetuate the family name.’

‘I, um, what? That cack- handed excuse for a pilot, that idiot space biker, you’re not taking that seriously?’ Lennart said, confused.

‘He was a poor kid far out of his depth, but he did have the foresight to bring a genetic sample.’ Tamora pointed out.

‘Of course, Dad’s lab…’ Aldrith Lennart had been a consultant biomechanical engineer, he still had a basement full of body part cloning tanks and cybernetics gear. He had all the facilities for home scanning- would have been on CorSec’s watch list as a potential bioterrorist if he hadn’t put in the odd day’s work for them.

‘The sample confirms it, somewhere in your irresponsible, footloose bachelor life, you managed to reproduce. Is Plarch not with you now? He can tell you the rest of the story.’ Tamora said.

‘Ah.’ Lennart said. ‘He would be the XY-depletion I had ionised and arrested for trying to ram my ship. I supposed he must have switched a rockskipper into droid control, ordered a least- time path to Black Prince, but he forgot to tell it to match velocity- why are you looking at me like that?’ Lennart said, as if he couldn’t tell.

‘He’s in a cell on your ship, and you’re worrying about the technicalities?’ Tamora said, looking at her son in frank disbelief. ‘You had your son in law, my grandson, shot and thrown in jail? You have to get him out.’

‘It’s not quite as easy as that- it was CorSec who scooped him up.’ Lennart said, thinking oh, shit, this is going to be trouble. I virtually ignored him. What kind of name is Plorch, anyway? ‘My own slate isn’t exactly clear of trouble at the moment-‘.

‘If you were tempted to ask yourself why none of your ex girlfriends ever got in touch, I think you should be able to work it out now. What am I going to do with you? Nearly half a century old and you still need help from your mother.’

‘It’s possible that you can come and break us both out of jail, I might end up in the next cell over. I am very much the starfleet’s problem now, and I may or may not be able to talk myself out of this.’ Lennart said.

‘Of course.’ Tamora said. ‘The habit of obedience was never in you, Galactic Spirit knows your father and I tried.’

‘With methods that could have been used to define ‘counterproductive’. The more I think about it, the more convinced I get that subconsciously, you wanted me to grow up to be a rebel. Well, congratulations- it worked. The miracle is that I managed to go on to do anything even vaguely organised.’ Lennart protested.

‘Our managing not to lose our tempers and have you replaced by an android counts, I think.’ Tamora said. ‘Professional trouble, an abandoned daughter, a neglected woman, a son in law shot and thrown in jail- didn’t we teach you to play well with others?’

‘Actually, no, you didn’t, you taught me to be brutally competitive in all things, and about the overwhelming importance of determination and willpower. It’s amazing I turned out even vaguely normal.’ Lennart said, and Tydings had to hold back a giggle.

‘Believe me, son, you were never likely to turn out normal. You were our eldest, we tried to prepare you for life, but Garrett would never have done something like that, Alrika would never neglect her parents.’

‘And then I spoilt it by actually taking you seriously.’ Lennart pointed out. ‘I deal with cranks, fools, idiots and pranksters every day, mostly my crew. Zit, or whatever his name is, came in on a collision approach- he’s lucky I only had him ionised.’ And I felt nothing for him whatsoever, not that it was remotely probable that I would, Lennart thought.

I was acting, instinctively, to show off in front of, protect as if they were in any real danger, my military family- as opposed to my real family? No. Biological, at most.

‘I had every right to have him shot, he was committing a category 2 offence- and I had better talk to CorSec before they decide to do it for me.’ To find out who my daughter’s mother was and why she never got in touch; and to tell him he’s a fool. ‘How is Garrett? Alli?’

‘Don’t think you can wipe the slate clean by suddenly pretending to be worried about the rest of the family. They both keep in touch, for a start. Alrika’s technical director at Kor Vella Down now, her eldest is about to go to college, Garrett was landscaper of the year for the fourth time running. Everyone’s fine, apart from my homicidal delinquent eldest boy.’

‘It took me twenty years to come home, because every time I started I was faced with the challenge of explaining all the other times when I hadn’t. And in some ways…I didn’t want to see how much of me still fitted into that pattern. Look, I have to go. With luck, I’ll be by later. Without it, I may need you to come by and post bail.’ Chance would be a fine thing.

[Vehrec]

The billennia old problem of obedience to conflicting orders.

I believe you mean Millenia here, I make that particular substitution enough to not hold it against anyone.

Much better this time around, greatly improved by the presence of what might plausibly be Thrawn's thought processes. The run-around they give each other also feels much better balanced this time between respect and insubordination.

Only thing that's still unclear to me is the line about squadron command being interesting- I have read that twice now as a compromise between the two extremes of their respective ability and the subsequent lines about this now being a ship-on-ship exercise confuse me.

[Vianca]

The billennia old problem of obedience to conflicting orders.

I believe you mean Millenia here, I make that particular substitution enough to not hold it against anyone.

Much better this time around, greatly improved by the presence of what might plausibly be Thrawn's thought processes. The run-around they give each other also feels much better balanced this time between respect and insubordination.

Only thing that's still unclear to me is the line about squadron command being interesting- I have read that twice now as a compromise between the two extremes of their respective ability and the subsequent lines about this now being a ship-on-ship exercise confuse me.

Think I know, Lennart lets his squadron take on Thrawn's squadron under the command of his squadron's second in command (who commands his/her own Star Destroyer) while Lennart takes Thrawn's Star Destoyer head on.
Lennart's squadron has orders to prevent Thrawn's squadron to be able to stop Lennart's ship from going after Thrawn himself.
And if you factor in that the simulated ship is probably a simulated copy of 721.......

[Thanas]

I am not so sure if Lennart would win in a ship-to-ship engagement, considering that every battle we Thrawn in before he rises to GA rank mostly consists of his flagship and at most a second Star Destroyer for backup.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

There is a certain amount of arrogance talking, most of it calculated- Jorian Lennart is fully aware that this will get back to his crew via the aide, and is putting on a degree of front.

Also, this is one that's directly relevant to that whole different sense of time, space and military potential; amongst other things, we never really meet Thrawn's military family. By which I mean the circle of officers that know him, follow him from commission to commission, depend on his patronage and/or consider themselves followers of his. I'm using a nineteenth century term, I'm sure there's a modern equivalent, probably obscene.

Pellaeon, yes, but that's six or seven years away at this point- and it may be telling that when he returned from the unknown regions, he didn't take any of his senior team out there back with him. I'm not sure he has a military family at all. Admirers certainly, imitators maybe, but he never really struck me as a personality all that interested in being liked. Feared and respected, yes.

Which may seem irrelevant to the business of war, until you start thinking what that means in terms of his own team anticipating his wishes, being able to contingency plan for him, and generally speaking going the extra mile. Force aside, Lennart's crew push themselves and push the boundaries of the envelope a lot harder for him than the Chimera's crew ever did for Thrawn, or the crews of any of the ships he made use of in TIE Fighter.

The future Grand Admiral is not a stainlessly shining military paragon, however close he may manage to get; he does have strengths and weaknesses. If he has a critical flaw- which I think he does, it is after all the one that killed him in the end- it is a lack of human (and other) empathy; a lack of willingness to grasp the needs and motivations of the people, of all species, who worked for him.

That matters more in a small force, more to a junior than a senior officer; I reckon his style of command is simply better adapted to a large force where things tend to the average anyway, and less well so to a more intimate group. At that, he is likely to do a better job of small unit command than Lennart would of a larger formation.

[Thanas]

There is a certain amount of arrogance talking, most of it calculated- Jorian Lennart is fully aware that this will get back to his crew via the aide, and is putting on a degree of front.

Also, this is one that's directly relevant to that whole different sense of time, space and military potential; amongst other things, we never really meet Thrawn's military family. By which I mean the circle of officers that know him, follow him from commission to commission, depend on his patronage and/or consider themselves followers of his.

Sure we do. There is Voss Parck, of course Thrawn's flag captain, Captain Dagon Niriz, with whom he seems to have probably the closes relationship ever in his career. Both followed him to the unknown regions, with Parck eventually succeeding to command his fleet. Niriz however is especially notable for spending years as Thrawn's flag captain. Niriz is characterwise the opposite of Lennart (a by-the-book officer), but they share some similar character traits as well - both are very loyal, supportive and protective of his admiral and both place more importance on jobs being done right instead of hunting for medals. Note that Niriz was also present when Vader talked to Thrawn about manipulating the black sun and the noghri, which means that Thrawn does trust him enough to see his secrets. Have you read "Side trip?"

Also, Mareek Stele is another officer with whom Thrawn formed a close relationship, note that Stele joined Thrawn forces upon the personal request by Thrawn. Later, the position of favorite fighter pilot of Thrawn seemed to have been "filled" by Soontir Fel, who unlike Stele was not a creature of the emperor.

Pellaeon, yes, but that's six or seven years away at this point- and it may be telling that when he returned from the unknown regions, he didn't take any of his senior team out there back with him. I'm not sure he has a military family at all.

His senior team was probably busy with establishing the empire of the hand.

Admirers certainly, imitators maybe, but he never really struck me as a personality all that interested in being liked. Feared and respected, yes.

Really? Because I remember a scene in The last command where he does manage to get liked by the crew...remember promoting the tractor beam operator whom he promoted?

The future Grand Admiral is not a stainlessly shining military paragon, however close he may manage to get; he does have strengths and weaknesses. If he has a critical flaw- which I think he does, it is after all the one that killed him in the end- it is a lack of human (and other) empathy; a lack of willingness to grasp the needs and motivations of the people, of all species, who worked for him.

I doubt that he is unable to grasp the needs and motivations, I simply believe he has no qualms about enslaving a species for the "greater good". Yet note that his end goal allegedly was to make the galaxy save against a coming threat, so I would argue that he was more of a "the end justifies the means" person than a sociopath. Note that he does help Cardas in "Outbound flight" and wants to protect the idealistic nature of Maris Ferasi, even going so far as to ask Cardas for a favor.

Consider this quote by Thrawn about Ferasi in particular and idealists in general:

"There are all too few idealists in this universe, Car'das. Too few people who strive always to see only the good in others. I wouldn't want to be responsible for crushing even one of them."

Hmmm....maybe Lennart met Ferasi on the outer rim sometimes? That would definitely get Thrawn's attention and makes sure that Thrawn has a personal stake in this as well.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

This actually came together really quickly; it's the first half of the next chapter.

Hull 721 arc 2 ch 3

The police were surprisingly accommodating, although the front desk had made the usual noises, including jokingly threatening to arrest him for graffiti and grand littering.

Lennart had bounced back that if that was all the fine it was, he could afford to repaint the entire damn’ planet so they would be better of not giving him ideas.

CorSec were generally a professional, determined, competent bunch. Then again, they had to be- their job was policing an entire system full of Corellians.

He was an official of the state, technically he should have shared the arrest, so they were more open to him, treated him more like one of their own than a random punter off the streets.

He was still in the dress uniform he had worn to turn up before the rear-admiral; there was a little interest over that, including one female investigator who kept giving him the eye.

He was shown to an interview room, then the prisoner was escorted in and plonked down on the other side of the table. He was young but not very young, early twenties maybe, and obviously nervous.


Too many people in here for anything really delicate, Lennart thought.

‘If it’s officially possible, Inspector deLante,’ Lennart asked the policewoman who had followed him in, ostensibly to supervise, ‘I’d prefer to speak with this delinquent fool in private.’

The delinquent fool may have been unfairly maligned by that; he looked intelligent enough, but physically soft, not a man of action. He managed to look aggrieved, insulted, desperate and hopeful all at once.

‘It is a violation of the rules of custody.’ deLante said, tone clearly considering it though, wondering how far she could push it in terms of asking why.

Brutal pragmatism, Lennart decided. To deflect her a little and drive home to him how badly he had screwed up. ‘I have three Imperial warships’ sensor logs to back up whatever charges need to be made; the legal system is already positioned to do a perfectly legitimate and thorough job of hurting him. What I want to do is put a few questions to him that are unlikely to be asked in the normal course of proceedings- to start with, why.’


‘That’s not fair!’ Blotch- no, it was Plarch, Lennart reminded himself- burst out. ‘I only wanted to talk to you.’

‘As a result of stunning, unbelievable incompetence in the field of space piloting, you’re doing that in an interview room.’ Lennart snapped at him. To deLante he asked ‘What has he said so far?’

‘He claimed kinship,’ she said skeptically, ‘that it was all just a hideous misunderstanding- that he’s your son.’ deLante added that as if she didn’t believe it, and Lennart couldn’t blame her. There was no physical resemblance at all.

‘In-law, apparently. Estranged. Also standing an excellent chance of being disowned in the next few minutes, unless he has a superb explanation for one of the most imbecilic things I’ve ever seen done with a starship.’ Lennart, himself formerly a navigation officer, squadron nav leader and fleet nav coordinator, said, glaring at the young man.

‘I’m an archaeologist,’ the young man wailed, ‘I don’t know anything about space, I knew I needed to get in touch with you, you-‘ he shut up then; so at least he’s not totally devoid of sense, Lennart thought, just ninety-nine percent.

‘If you had measured your actions to begin with you might not be in this mess.’ Lennart said, still glaring at him- the young man wilted. ‘Inspector deLante-‘


‘Viktoria.’ She said. No, Lennart thought, please don’t tell me she’s attracted to the patriarchal type.

‘This is the part I’d prefer to keep to myself, a personal rather than a legal problem really, so, Viktoria, if you wouldn’t mind-‘

‘Of course.’ She said, smiling and turning off the recorder on the desk. There was still a one way window, and if he listened carefully he could hear her colleagues mocking her for throwing herself at him.

Not of major importance. Only to be expected, really. She left, then, the beat cops that had escorted him in went with her, and Lennart coldly appraised the young man who claimed to have coupled with his daughter.


He was not an impressive sight, and Lennart had to wonder what she saw in him- he was slightly above middle height and thin, sandy haired, still had a few freckles. Darting, panicked eyes.

‘Right, let’s start with who you are. Name and planet of origin?’ he said, as he would have to a new recruit joining the ship- it had been years since it had been his job to do that in person but he still remembered. ‘Academic and criminal records?’

‘What, no rank and serial number?’ he at least showed a flash of spirit there. ‘Didn’t Mrs Lennart tell you anything?’

‘If I asked you for those things, it would be because I thought you were an agent of the Alliance to Restore the Republic, and you would leave here for the execution booth.’ Lennart snarled at him.

‘Mother told me that you had a genetic sample which verifiably came from a descendant of mine, but that confirms nothing about the relationship between you. For all I know so far, you could be keeping her hostage and actually be a Rebel assassin with baradium for bone marrow.’

His reaction was one of absolute horror, Lennart noted; probably not an assassin, then- or at least he wasn’t aware that he was. If the Alliance did get hold of this business, how long would it take them to figure it out?

‘So far, I’ve already seen you try to kill yourself once- and take me with you.’ Lennart added.


‘It’s not like that.’ The young man screamed, loudly enough that turning off the recorder was reduced to a formality- everyone on the same floor probably heard that.

‘Rafe loves me, I don’t know why, but I love her, we’re, were actually engaged, I have my, oh krutz the security took everything, took my ring, my computer, you have to get them back.’

‘You’re starting in the middle again. Back to square one. Who are you?’ Lennart demanded.

‘Look, my name is Plarch GelVaaru, I’m a final year archaeology student at the University of Chandrila, I specialise in the retrieval of antique data, do you want my matric number as well?’

Oh, kriff, Lennart thought, they’ve turned up something ugly, they’re in some kind of trouble they need me to get them out of- and where is she? ‘That can be an unexpectedly dangerous business.’ He said, fishing, trying to confirm.


‘We know, we found, um-‘ It seemed to occur to him exactly where he was.

‘Where,’ Lennart added, ‘is she?’ No wonder the kid was up to high doh.

‘We needed help, and the university had a scanning service, supposed to be for STDs, Rafe decided to see if it could tell her anything about her genetics, about her parents, we had no-one else-‘

‘So I’m a last resort, am I?’ Lennart said. No wonder the boy was going into something dry, dusty and dead, he had the social tact of a vampire watermelon. With his daughter? He hoped it was a case of opposites attracting.

‘Rafe, Raffaella, she has friends but nobody who, well, her adoptive parents are a nurse and a teacher, they adopted her out of the maternity ward, we don’t know anyone with pull. Nobody legal.’ Plarch said.

‘That’s a fascinating statement from a boy in an interview room. Tell me more about her.’ Lennart asked.


‘I, oh. She was a postgrad teaching assistant, I don’t know what we are now. Her parents, she was going by the name of Jovanov, she looks nothing like them- she’s tall, a bit less than your height, and very serious most of the time. A cat herder. Very organised, usually the responsible one.’

Good, Lennart thought. A survivor, someone who can cope. Although I wonder- I wish, I wish I had the chance to find out how she would have turned out if I had been there for her.

Although running around with this fool, she’s obviously lacking a little in the common sense department. Postgrad? Older than I had thought- twenty-two at least. Born towards the end of or just after the Clone Wars.

Who had there been then? Who was there who would have carried a child of his to term, then immediately put her up for adoption, without even bothering to tell him?

I thought I had better taste in women than that, Lennart reprimanded himself- then his subconscious worked through the dates and raised a big red flag marked ‘Oh, shit.’


Galactic Spirit, no. It couldn’t be true, it was so ridiculously melodramatic, things like that only happened in the vids. Usually the soap operas, although few soap operas included mass murder, political purges and high yield weaponry. Too few, maybe, but-

‘If I’m right, Raffaella’s medical records revealed that she was removed from the womb at four months or so and placed in stasis, then, maybe a year later, was brought to term in a cyberwomb- the mother authorised it, but never appeared to collect her.’ Lennart said.

‘How- you knew.’ Plarch accused him.

‘I guessed. If you’re talking about legal people, that would rule her mother out of the equation these days.’ Lennart said, almost refusing to believe it, for the other reason that it was too painful to be true.

Altara Yallam. Or to give her her full and proper title, Jedi Knight Altara Yallam.

The only one of the five jedi he had worked with during the wars who was remotely worthy of her rank, and the woman he had tried to persuade, and seduce, into leaving the Order.

Apparently with some success, although it was a hell of a way to find out, twenty years too late.

She had been with the Third Strike Group of the Coruscant Home Fleet, which had been something of a dumping ground for the jedi their council no longer had complete faith in, the ones who had been beginning to crack or to question. Officially, an operational training unit/emergency reserve.

She had been killed when her ship had exploded in crossfire from a pair of Lucrehulk battle carriers, early on that long, terrible day. One of the honoured dead, victims of the Confederacy’s last mad bid for victory.


What did I mean to her? Lennart wondered. She must have been able to sense, recognise that I was in denial about my own touch of the force- still am, really. What did I represent- living proof that it’s possible to have the force without it having you? A life beyond the sterile confines of the order- a chance worth taking?

There’s a large piece of living evidence to prove the point, but I’ll never hear it from her. Play it out to the end, that was her style, she must have been waiting for the end of the war to tell me.

She would have stood by the Jedi Order for as long as it mattered, until the war and the crying need for them were over, but after that, well, I can hope, retroactively, I can try and convince myself, but I’ll never really know.

There would have been the purges, as well, and the rise of the dark side. The rest of the jedi order could fry as far as I was concerned, Lennart thought, because the only part of it I personally gave a damn about was dead and gone.


Of course, that was only confirmation of his primary suspicion- that his and Altara’s daughter, and this young puppy, were on the run because of her force sensitivity index, which should be around the seven thousand mark. Crap.

‘How did you get from there to me?’ he asked, collecting his thoughts with difficulty.

‘We sliced into the adoption agency’s records.’ Plarch said, confessing to a fairly serious crime. ‘A lot of what we were after never existed in the first place, but we found some security footage.’

‘I’ll want that.’ Lennart said, dry mouthed.

As well as lacking force sensitivity, Plarch lacked social sensitivity. He wasn’t puzzled or intrigued at all by that reaction. ‘It’s in my things.’ He stated dully, matter of fact. ‘We, um, we found a woman.’

‘Slightly over medium height, moved as if she was walking on air, long fair hair,’ what would Altara have worn for the occasion, ‘uncomfortably but expensively dressed, blue green eyes that she could tickle you with just by looking at you.’

‘How did you guess?’ Plarch said.

‘You don’t actually have to know someone that well to make babies with them, but I think you’ll find that it helps.’ Lennart said, and immediately wondered how he had managed to bring that out. Was the mask that thick, then?


How well did I ever really know her, that this comes as such a surprise? He asked himself. How well did she think she knew me, that she was willing to take that kind of a chance- I changed, that day, I think we all did. Those of us who lived through it.

I loathe the very idea of precognition, Lennart thought, but why couldn’t it have worked, just that once?

The way we always argued, the way we sparked off each other, both of us young, both with more responsibility than someone that age ought to have to carry, both of us lashing out against it by trying to tear the other’s world down.

I wanted her to put down the burden she insisted on carrying, that no normal human could have shouldered, so she would finally have room and energy to be that normal, intricate, happy, troubled, turbulent being no jedi could let themselves be.

The fact that she bothered to argue with me at all should have been the biggest single sign that I was getting somewhere, that I needed to switch from trying to pry her loose to openly signalling that she had somewhere else to go. She always did. I thought she understood that.


Galactic Spirit, I even predicted the purges, in my own twisted way. Except I thought they would be internal. After doing so much and losing so many I didn’t see how the order could possibly remain unchanged; I saw a natural split, between the back-to-the-past crowd led by that little green troll and those with any sense.

If the force flows from all living things, then how is it that the jedi never noticed that prime principle of life- change? How is it that they never realised that life grows, and adapts, and struggles? I wanted her out of that.

I suggested that she resign from the order and go for a purely naval commission- there would have been more than enough to do, putting the galaxy back together. It would have been a real thing, necessary and just, without the crushing expectations of the order. I never genuinely expected her to actually bloody listen.

Now their daughter was on the run, subject to the purge orders- as she would have been, if she was alive. And as he was. What would she make of me now, he thought, with a crimson bladed lightsabre in my pocket?

Horror? Revulsion? Baffled understanding? An attempt to redeem me, although from what is far less important than to what, and there isn’t an answer to that yet? Something else, just as inexplicably contrarian?

‘Um, are you all right?’ Plarch asked him. ‘You’re crying.’

‘For the living past, and the dead future. Are they not worth-‘ Lennart stopped himself before he could maunder on. No need for this boy, or the rest of the cops watching through the one way mirror, to see. ‘You were talking about the security holo. Go on.’


‘Well, there were no names officially recorded, she bribed them to silence, but as she was leaving after authorising Rafe to be grown, she said “Jorian will be so surprised.” We-‘

‘She was right.’ Lennart acknowledged. ‘Tell me you had the sense not to do a region wide name search that would have set off half the alarm bells in the Ubiqtorate.’

‘I told you, I’m an archaeologist. It’s all about method. I would have, but Rafe stopped me- we managed to find the docbot who removed Rafe in the first place and mined it’s memories. It had been wiped, but no wipe is ever complete, there are always ghost impressions, you see-‘

He rambled on a little about the technicalities of holographic memory while Lennart, who knew it all anyway, tried to pull his mind away from the thought of ghost impressions.

‘It was a difficult operation, something about a strange reaction to the anaesthetic, she rambled a few things that let us figure out that you were a spaceman, and from Corellia.’ Plarch said.

‘That was when you managed to get yourselves into even more trouble with the law, which is the reason she isn’t here.’ Lennart stated, as a fact, trying not to let his tone say ‘what the kriff did you do, you idiot?’

‘Yes, well, we, um, we needed the money to hire a starship, we were students and poor-‘

‘Interview rooms are likely to be a regular feature in your life, aren’t they?’ Lennart said, forcing himself back to something resembling equilibrium. That defence was wearing thin, he wasn’t sure how much wit he had left in him with anger and grief close on his heels.

If he let either one win- if he gave in to grief, they would take him out of here and pour him into a nice upholstery-walled room. Allowing the anger through would lead him to slice the arm off this young fool and beat the rest of him to death with it, not the smartest play to make in a police station.

For something that’s supposed to flow from all living things, how come the force is so often so very ridiculously maladapted for survival, he let himself- forced himself- to wonder; drifting back to realise he had missed the details of a bank heist.

‘So why are-‘ Lennart stopped himself before he could finish that question, recognising that he had been about to shoot the messenger. ‘What happened?’ he asked, instead of why are you here and why is she not.

‘We, we had to run for it, we got chased, she runs faster than I can, we split up- she tried to lead them away into the lower levels, gave me a meeting point. I went there and I waited, I did, I swear, but then I saw on the news that she had been arrested.’ Plarch said, shaking with the memory of it.

‘I couldn’t think of anyone who could help or anywhere else to go. I stowed away on a freighter, used an escape pod to get down, I, I wasn’t thinking very clearly.’

‘How many separate offences did you manage to commit, that each on their own could have put your head on the block?’ Lennart said, biting his tongue and refusing to say more. This was definitely a moment for anger if there ever was one, but no. Couldn’t let himself go, that would end in intestines. ‘What did you do from there?’

‘I took the sample to your mother, but the police were there, I couldn’t stay, I got to the spaceport and broke security on a rockhopper with a droid pilot-‘ Plarch gabbled.

‘You fried it’s normal safeties when you took it over.’ Lennart explained. ‘Such safety features as one of those things has. It didn’t warn you that the least time path you told it to take- you did tell it that, didn’t you?-‘

‘I did.’ Plarch said. ‘I needed to-‘

‘That least time path didn’t include matching vector, it came in like a missile. One of the things you need is to learn a great deal more about space flight, for a start. I’m starting to wonder whether or not Rafaella might need to be saved from you.’ Lennart allowed himself that much, at least, and the look of pain in the young fool’s eyes was-

a temptation, to give more. No. That was not what he had set out to be, however appealing the option may seem.


‘I can’t get you out of this.’ Lennart admitted, after turning it over in his mind; the young man’s face fell.

‘If I call you my prisoner and have you remanded to Imperial custody, there are four potential death sentences you’ve earned- that you’re legally liable to, anyway- that I can’t have waved away without drawing too much attention. I want your effects, the data you’ve found. I can’t do anything to help Rafaella without the information there.’

That was too harsh, Lennart realised.

‘If you’re about to go for broke, try to blackmail me into getting you out of here by holding my daughter’s safety against me, don’t. I would lose my temper and kill you.’ Lennart said, and Plarch believed every word- he wilted, the idea going out of him. Lennart regretted it at once, especially because it was true.

‘I’ll see what sort of bargain I can strike with CorSec. I do need- let’s face it, there’s krutzing little use in your having gone through all of this unless you do give them to me- your leads. Will you do that?’

Plarch nodded, sadly. ‘You’re not the sort of father I imagined she would have.’

‘A situation like the one you come to me with, you expect normal?’ Lennart managed. ‘Come on.’ He stood and went to the door, banged on it once.


The person who opened the door was Investigator deLante. Viktoria. Apparently she had used some of the time to put on lipstick and eye-shadow. Overdone, Lennart thought, he had always preferred the natural look.

‘What did you plan to charge young Mr GelVaaru with?’ Lennart asked her.

‘Officially, we’re simply cleaning up after you.’ She said. ‘Most of the people we scooped up are going to be charged with reckless flying, various other kinds of traffic offences. If you’re taking a personal interest…’ she let that trail off, giving him the eye again.


‘Well, I’m satisfied that he is not a rebel terrorist, and does not need to have the extremities of martial law dropped on him- but for being daft enough to let it look as if he did, he’s definitely due some kind of learning experience.’ Lennart said, and there was some relief on the faces of the rest of the CorSec people behind her.

Partly because he wasn’t proposing to throw the law out entirely, which would mean that they would need to arrest him. Plarch was horrified, but had the sense not to say anything.

‘What sort of punishment do those traffic offences involve?’ Lennart asked, expecting them to come back with some sort of variation on what sort of offences do you have in mind, accusations of bias and bribery, just sport to prove they couldn’t be pushed around. Wondering how long and how far the dance would go. He decided to short circuit the process.

‘Fines would be pointless- mother would guilt trip me into paying them for him anyway. Time and sweat, I think, something that involves community service, a work release program, like that. Kid claims to be a competent computerman, most of the way through a data mining degree so it must be true.

Something that forces him to sharpen his common sense and social skills, Galactic Spirit knows he needs it. Give him a chance to make good the damage he did, and teach him not to do it again.’ Lennart suggested, and the senior investigator nodded, faintly.

Kriff, that’s right, I’m rich, Lennart thought. Captain’s share of prizes and captures, which added up to- more than he really felt the weight of yet. It was rare enough for any rich man’s kid to be punished for anything, and it really irritated CorSec.

They would still be slightly surprised by that, and now was the right time to ask for more. ‘Plarch?’

‘Oh, um, yes. Can you give my computer and my files to Jo- Captain Lennart?’

There was a quick, muttered conversation among the police; needed for evidence, remember? Not if he’s already pleaded guilty, sensor logs anyway, deLante said ‘We don’t need them any more.’

‘Good.’ Lennart said, flashing her a quick grin he hoped she wouldn’t think deeply enough about to realise it was fake. ‘Oh, and whatever he comes in for, can it include forcing him to requalify as a pilot? We can’t have anyone who wants into a Corellian family being that absolutely useless in a cockpit.’

[Vehrec]

... Well Frak. Bad enough when YOU'RE the force sensitive, how much worse is it when your kid is in the boat as well, and she's stronger than you are?

[Thanas]

Great chapter. I didn't expect this one.

As an aside, Lennart better hope that Thrawn didn't put a trail on him.

[LadyTevar]

Just what the boy needs... some hard work and common sense knocked into his head.

[Raptor_Pilot]

Wow!
That chapter punched me in the face, in a good way.
Nothing else to say, nice work!

[Vianca]

Seems Lennart has to put his special Force hunters Stormtroopers on this, it's the only way he can keep his kid alive.

[Singular Quartet]

Seems Lennart has to put his special Force hunters Stormtroopers on this, it's the only way he can keep his kid alive.

You just know they'd do it for him, too. The more passionate he becomes about something, the more he falls, afterall.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Yes, I know, I've been a bit lax about returning comments lately, it's the economy...or something like that leaving me in a state of general distraction. Anyway, occasionally I have to smell the recaff, surf Wiki and similar things to remind myself how far away from the norm Jorian Lennart's take on the force really is.

To summarise, his theory is that the Jedi Order, after the near-total destruction of the Sith and the extremely high losses on their own side in the Light and Darkness War, reorganised itself as what was, in fact if not in name, a structure to prevent the use of the Force.

His theory was that the original intent was for the order to maintain a bare minimum of real capability to deal with the dark side if it ever raised it's head again, and otherwise to sequester itself, to become increasingly arcane and theoretical, to avoid politics and the temptations that it would lead to.

Some time in the five hundred years after that, they forgot, and allowed themselves to fall into the collossal error that their essentially celibate, detached, monastic ways really were the true expression of the light side.

He believes, and on some level recognises a large amount of wishful thinking in that belief, that there is an inactive but revivable tradition of the light, activist and interested, actively seeking to do good; and an anarchic, decentralised, every-man-for-himself element in the dark.

All of which is essentially his own pet theory, and with about as much evidence as most conspiracy theories. If I didn't find it consistent on some level I couldn't write it like this, but I certainly don't follow it all the way.
If there's a self insert in here anywhere, it's probably Aron Jandras.

Oh, yes, Thanas; I'm trying to think of a reason that that wouldn't happen, actually. It is a logical and intelligent thing to do, but when Lennart finds out- and between EW gear and the Force, he's likely to- the loss of temper would be ugly. He's quite likely to swing for admiral Thrawn, which would do his career no good at all. Considering he's likely to do it with a lightsabre, it's not going to do much good to the admiral either. I'd rather not back myself into that particular corner, thank you very much...

Team Omega-17-Blue would seem a logical choice for what is looking increasingly like a jailbreak, and they would be more than happy to do it, but Lennart would have to think very carefully before inviting them to do so, knowing that they do have and think in terms of higher loyalties- to the dark side and the Empire as a whole.

The price of getting them to help him- a simple order would be simply referred up the chain of command, and for real this time- would be high, at least a promise, if not some form of act of devotion to the dark side.

Anyway, this is the second half of the chapter. I'm not sure everything in it is plausible, either.


Part the B

‘Finished with engines.’ Brenn announced, standing up from the makeshift command chair and taking one last look around Systems Subcontrol before flipping the off switch on the console.
Admonisher was here now, the clamps were in, and she was officially someone else’s problem now.

Whether she was actually in good enough condition to be economically repairable was someone else’s problem, too, and he was truly thankful for that. The ship had taken a beating, and trying to keep her running on even the medium-speed, relatively short run to Corellia had been a nightmare. Like unicycling down an endless flight of stairs.

So many systems integration issues, and on a ship only just short of the size of a light cruiser that was a lot of systems to integrate. Our own fault for doing such an enthusiastic job disintegrating them in the first place, he had to admit.

Parts of the heavy destroyer were still molten, and if she hadn’t been thoroughly ionised she would have done a much better job of tearing herself apart. With the bridge shot, the tensors and compensators had started to drift out of alignment.

The shields had to be put back together to bleed heat off, the computers that were still left had to be re- networked and retaught how to recognise them, the ship’s main power transmission grid was 35% destroyed and needed a kriff of a lot of workarounds, everything was suffering from some degree of shock damage.

Brenn, who was convinced the ship was held together with putty, was not wearing his uniform cap. Instead, he had a piratical tricorne made out of duct tape on his head.

In fact, he had to wonder how the rebel privateers usually managed to sail their captives away so quickly, and resolved to ask the next one they caught. Of course, there was the fact that their captives usually got a lot less energy dumped into them in the process.

The tricorne was fair comment on a troublesome cruise. Black Prince had done well- outrageously well, by the normal standards of a deployment, and the bonuses and bounties had paid out, but official approval at the highest level was still lacking. Careers still in flux. Brenn didn’t know where he- or any of them- were going next.


The unit they were part of had a notoriously low personnel turnover. Apart from the revolving door office of Exec and the knock- on changes from that, Black Prince and most of 851 sent on and drew in somewhere from five to eight percent of their personnel each year.

It was an excellent outfit to be in if you were a professional, but a lousy one if you were a careerist. In fact, the joke now was that the captain was reduced to having new bits built on to the ship so he would have room to promote somebody.

There weren’t too many ways a navigator could get a new job out of that. Operating as a squadron flagship had been demanding and challenging, or in plain civilianspeak, fun.

Now, back to normal. Insofar as normal ever was for them. Kriff knows, he was one of the best in the fleet- or at least one of the best in the squadron, which as far as they were concerned meant the best in the fleet.

There was much worse duty than the sort of long range semi- independent recon sweeps and detachments to support hard- pressed units that they usually drew. And there was even a certain masochistic satisfaction in doing the same basic job over and over again, slightly better each time, on an asymptotic approach to perfection.

It was just that Brenn, personally, was fed up with seeing less talented, less well qualified colleagues get on and get ahead. Professional standards in the fleet varied far more than the fleet liked to recognise or admit, and it was a fair bet that at least eighty percent of anyone’s performance report was pure poodoo.

There were not many who were really as good as they claimed they were, and all too many incentives to artificially inflate evaluations and test scores. Brenn, by comparison, was actually rather modest.


He had a lieutenant-commander department deputy, three senior lieutenant watch commanders, all of them were at least capable of serving as a line or division nav coordinator.

Each of the three watches had three lieutenants, their duties usually broke down as one on prime plot, one roughing out alternatives, and one, usually the most senior, doing Other Ships- measuring and predicting the movements of the enemy, other Imperial ships, any civilians daft enough to be in the vicinity.

Each watch was composed of fifty ensigns, POs and spacemen doing the heavy number crunching, most of them capable of stepping up a rate at least. It was a smooth, fluid, efficient and usually successful system, and it had been sharpening it’s collective skill to the point where it was overqualified for the job it had to do.

Flagship work suited him and his team well, but where was a professional challenge like that to be found on an ongoing basis? 851, sixteen destroyers and a light cruiser, was a four division outfit.

Even they were largely notional, deploying independently more often than not, and all four divisional flag slots were filled anyway. It was an open secret that Jorian Lennart was due the next available slot, but when that would be was anyone’s guess.

Perhaps this business might do it- if the powers that were finally decided to sign off on Lennart’s actions, if he managed to convince them that Adannan’s death had been necessary.

If the squadron commander, Rear-Admiral Rawlin, moved up to a light cruiser division or squadron command- feasible now that he had two of them, the former Moff of Vineland sector’s flagship Oyadan as well as his own Jorvik- that was the most probable way.

Even then, there was relatively little to do supervising people like his colleagues in 851, they were generally too good to be that much of a management challenge. Unless they were trying.

Transferring out might move him on in terms of rank and position, but would the job get any more interesting? Vineland were crying out for people, but that was straightforward point-A-to-point-B work, an educational challenge more than anything else to bring everyone else up to spec.

There was, for him personally, the vague prospect of inheriting the captain’s chair-if Lennart managed to clear himself and move up.


The senior wardroom had discussed the amount of trouble he was in, and their collective line on what to do about it. Mirannon, unusually bothering to take an interest- or let it be known that he took an interest- had strongly advised them not to have one.

According to the chief, Lennart was fairly clear on the naval side, not much could be thrown at him there; it was the shady side of the Imperial court and the Force he was really in trouble with.

Getting involved there would land them in dreck and probably not do much, if anything, to help. Another thing that they shouldn’t do was to make his job easier for him; that would only leave him with nothing to do but worry about the Force.

They should leave him enough work to stabilise him, make him feel like he was still a naval officer. That would be hard enough to do on a ship in refit, they might have to start inventing problems.

Rythanor had bounced back that his inventions frequently were the problem, and it had degenerated from there- everyone relieved to be back in a normal slanging match and too tense to want to think much more deeply along those lines.

There wasn’t much in the way of trouble the navigation department of a ship in dock for major refit could actually present. Not unless he did something like work up a plan to have the ship converted to Gree hypersails.

The general sense in the wardroom was that they would back the captain up, if it came to that- or if anybody actually bothered to ask them. There was more than enough to be found out.


In the meantime, there was a file on his datapad, an application to the Corellian Navy’s command qualification course. It was notoriously, witheringly demanding- far more so than the Imperial Starfleet’s equivalent.

As so often, growth was the enemy of stability, and change overwrote and overrode standards. If the Imperial Starfleet as a whole held it’s people to the same professional level, it would have been a far smaller force- they would never have been able to man the post Clone War flood of construction.

In consequence, if I get that, Brenn thought, only politics can keep me out of a command in the Starfleet proper, and heavy duty politics at that. On the other hand he wasn’t sure who had sent it to him. He strongly suspected Captain Lennart.

Well, it was worth doing in itself- something to be proud of, if he made it- and it was going to be at least an eighty day refit. The Nav department only needed to be there for the last twenty, integration.

Two months of leave, which he was due anyway, and he tried to think about what he could do with it. Kriff, I’m going to go mad with boredom, he realised. Putting himself through that wringer of a command course suddenly seemed like a viable option.



Mirannon, on the other hand, was looking forwards to a very interesting and active few months, rebuilding the ship, validating, fine tuning it all and working up to efficiency. At the moment he was in his seldom used office, in conference with Goran Caldor.

The usual holoimages were spinning there above the desk, the standard imperator-I as built, their current state, and the final target form, which Goran was still trying to make himself believe in.

‘It is…drastic. Very drastic. I know officially he signed off on it, but did you actually explain this first or is it supposed to be a surprise?’ he asked Mirannon.

‘The axials were something he inflicted on me.’ Mirannon pointed out. ‘Turnabout would be fair enough, but he does know, and this is a viable option.’


‘You must be at least forty percent salesman.’ Goran insulted Mirannon. ‘These here, here, here and here-‘ reaching into the image with a finger- ‘it’s the structural elements that are the worst, there’s no way we can put in the cradles for the engine and reactor modules without removing so much of the ship to get them in it’d be easier to jack up the nameplate.’

‘If I thought we could get away with the ‘reconstruction’ stunt I’d want this.’ Mirannon brought up another image, a peculiarly wide, bump- surfaced, sloped twin- horned delta with most of the superstructure in the slightly recessed underside. ‘KDY design study 785-4, iteration N3. It’d take too long.’

‘How long did you expect this to take?’ Goran challenged, although admitting to himself that Mirannon had a good eye for hardware. ‘You’d need so many separate parallel work teams- I don’t see how you expected some of these jobs to get done.’


‘Combat damage control procedure.’ Mirannon said, solving the problem with a wave of his hand. ‘With proper control on the heat sinks, I can have enough energy put down to fuse the spars in place and keep the rest of the compartment down below 300.’

‘K or C?’ Goran said, unconvinced. ‘Radiated heat- the only way is if you shot all the health and safety, which some of my lads might cheer you for but I would still ask for volunteers. You’ve planned the entire work sequence around this, haven’t you?’

‘You’re not thinking this through.’ Mirannon said, grinning. ‘This is a totally controlled environment designed to resist immense forces. Between tensors, grav compensators, stasis, heat sinks, boarding action shielding, and good old fashioned environmental plumbing, I can configure any individual compartment on the ship into anything from a nano- assembly clean room to a molecular furnace. Still haven’t quite figured out how to do both at once, though.’

Goran tried not to boggle at that, restrain incredulity long enough to think it through. If I abandon the concept of safe working practise and think purely in terms of energy and matter, then…it actually makes sense, he realised. Although only a complete lunatic could have thought of it.


There are no prima donnas in engineering, he thought; at least, there aren’t supposed to be- and schemes like this are why. What had he expected Lennart’s chief engineer to be like, anyway?

Someone half- trained and half experienced, a glorified mechanic like most fleet engineers.

Working in the repair department of a major yard had given him a seriously jaundiced view when it came to the majority of the Imperial Starfleet.

The problems they managed to come in with, the damage they managed to do to their ships, things that he would have sworn that not even a half-brained idiot could manage to have happen to them. Asteroid ramming, solar flares, collisions, but most of all the on-board mechanical cockups.


‘Inverting the polarity’ of a tensor field sounded like classic civilian issue pseudoscientific gibberish, or it least it must have done to the half- bright smartass who, in the course of a wardroom argument, had set out to prove that it was nonsense- by doing it.

In fact, making the matter normally covered by the tensor field more fragile, no artificial field of nuclear binding energy, and weakening the normally occurring bonds. Making everything much more likely to spontaneously decay.

In effect, the entire ship had been hit with a medium yield radiation bomb. Unfortunately for the crew, it was in the range between ‘survivable’ and ‘instant’- the bit of the chart marked ‘slow and incredibly painful.’ Cleaning that up had been a nightmare.

There had been any number of plumbing screwups, gripes not cleaned up promptly so they worsened into operational deficiencies which worsened into serious accidents.

There had been one case of spectacularly bad timing, a disabled neutrino emitter heat sink panel taken down for remedial maintenance, which was supposed to be validated with a full power static test.

The work had overrun, and the test had not been aborted. The flood of waste heat into the inert, disabled sink had overwhelmed the backups and flashed the entire subsystem to plasma, blowing out the side of the ship and killing a quarter of the crew. Corellian Engineering had had to pick up the pieces from that one too.


As far as Goran was concerned, it was a good day when no additional evidence came in of the fathomless stupidity of man, and any Starfleet engineer who claimed that he knew what he was doing was probably wrong. Especially the confident ones, who were not to be trusted.

Mirannon noticed. ‘Would you like me to demonstrate?’ he said, pulling the now- infamous remote control out of his pocket.

‘Not really, no.’ Goran said too late, as Mirannon activated the preset sequence and brought down a cone of ray shielding around a chair in the corner of the room. One he didn’t like.

‘Use this and cover your eyes.’ Mirannon handed him a scanner and a pair of goggles, put another pair on himself and authorised phase two of the sequence.

The ray shielding formed itself into a spindle containing a ball, the chair squashed, deformed, started to glow- there was a brilliant white flash and a faint shove of pressure, the shielding letting just enough through to make an impression for psychological effect.

Mirannon had dumped enough heat into the chair to incinerate it, centrifuged the gas and sparked a fusion burn in the lighter elements baked out. About a hundred megawatts, if it had been intended to be of actual use.


I’m in the same room as an improvised, uncontained, massively contaminated nuclear reactor, Goran realised. I’m dead. What’s it doing- chuntering along quite happily making helium, apparently, and the shielding was stopping it giving out anything past a tiny portion if its visible light; a literal, brilliant thermonuclear lightbulb.

The lunatic mad bastard I had been intending to take with me two seconds ago, only decided against it because I wanted him to die an incredibly painful radiation death too, actually got it right.

‘That’s an…interesting party piece you have there.’ He managed to say. ‘If I’d known what you were going to do I would have stopped you.’ It would have been uphill work, too. Mirannon was far the physically larger of the two.

‘If I told you, would you have believed me?’ Mirannon grinned. The improvised reactor pulsed in time with his facial muscles.

‘I’m not sure I believe it now.’ Goran said.

‘I can do it again if you like.’ Mirannon said, looking with pride on his work. ‘Actually, thinking about the party piece thing… I wonder if I can manage to texture the field intricately enough to do balloon animals?’

‘Please. Don’t. Try.’ Goran stated. ‘What the kriff kind of risk assessment would you file on this? Also- how do you shut it down safely?’

‘I’d call it a validation of an experimental project. You’re right, though; doing things that are inherently ridiculously unsafe is part of the territory. No-one in their right mind would have done this.’ He said, deadpan.

‘I noticed. Shut it down.’ Goran said, trying not to yell. Which was confusing, when he thought about it. Someone this dangerous deserved to be yelled at, and more.

‘Three separate local area nodes, all with independent safety and scram modes from three separate fields, and he still panics.’ Mirannon said, raising his eyes to the ceiling as if to some kind of deity. Phase three, main combat heat sink in circuit, let the globe drift down to the armoured deck and the energy be drained away.

The ray shielding was switched out, leaving a cold patch on the deck and a faint drizzle of frost in the air. Tensors suppressed the radioactivity.


‘I used to be a practical joker- knew your captain at university. When I got my diploma, I made damned sure I never got the two mixed up.’ Goran said, disapproving.

‘You’re missing so, so much.’ Mirannon beamed at him, before getting back to the serious. ‘We have the ability to do, and to undo, things which seem dangerous in the extreme. We have the tools and the practises.’

‘I noticed.’ Goran said. ‘I don’t like it. It’s not how we work, it’s not how any sane, reputable yard could or does work. It’s like trying to blow the ship up, and hoping you fail but produce an interesting blast pattern.’

‘Sane and reputable? I thought you were Corellian.’ Mirannon deadpanned, before handing him a datapad. ‘The less said about who came up with this and why, the better… documentation. Pressure, heat and radiation processes. Think about being able to do foundry work on site.’

‘Has this been validated? Has anyone, ever, done this before?’ Goran asked, not entirely believing.

‘Oh, yes. Numerous ships of the Starfleet.’ Mirannon stated, with airy confidence.


‘Precisely how many?’ Goran asked.

‘Five, at least.’ Mirannon said, not at all abashed. ‘Centurion, Cosmonaut Ijon Tichy, Warspite, ourselves, and Lone Wolf.’

‘Centurion’s captain and chief engineer were cashiered.’ Goran remembered. ‘Now I know why.’

‘It wasn’t that at all,’ Mirannon said with some exasperation, ‘ that was a simple matter of handing out unauthorised promotions- the Centurion’s captain got a mynock up his arse about TIE support and tried to run the maximum possible fighter wing he could physically fit.

It was bumping everyone in his crew who had the reflexes for it over to the fighter wing- well, command really- and raising everyone there to fit the organisation that did it, not the technical side. I mean, he was trying to operate eleven hundred TIE fighters under an Air Vice-Marshal. It was the administrative side that did him in.’

‘So how was it that the Chief Engineer was dismissed the service as well?’ Goran asked.

‘Accepting an unlawful commission as an Air Vice- Marshal.’ Mirannon said with a totally straight face.


Goran couldn’t decide if that was true or not. ‘We will have this checked and validated. Your estimates are still crazy though. Even if we think this is possible, no-one in the work crews is going to know how to do it. Why did you come to a staryard in the first place, with this thing outside good practise?’

‘Oh, my lads can do it if yours can’t, we just needed to get the materials- leave the bits by the side of the dock- and get the rest of the crew off to stop them screaming.’ Mirannon said, unabashed.

‘Are you seriously saying that some of the engineering personnel of your ship would refuse leave, to work on the ship when it’s supposed to be on dockyard hands, to pull a stunt like this?’

‘Most of them.’ Mirannon said calmly. ‘For the chance to take part in a major reconstruction, are you kidding? We had to draw lots to see who got saddled with missing out and having to go on leave.’

‘That,’ Goran said, ‘may be the craziest thing you’ve said and done so far.’

[Thanas]

Hmmm. There is a certain tech-crazy vice-admiral on the station who I bet would be very interested in what Lennarts crew is up to...

[rodon]

Makes since, considering the problems that the World Devastators would face trying to fit all those manufacturing lines, and specialized construction equipment to expand each one to its own specialized design. The Maw facility is going to be very happy that someone figured out this problem for them. If it actually got implemented on a fleet wide basis, total costs would decrease as the replacement parts could be made on-site without the transport needs (for the most part).

Thrawn is going to love the idea, especially when he gets assigned to expand the Empire's boarders.

[jpdt19]

I can't believe i missed the new chapter.

Superb sir, absolutely superb. I never remotely anticipated you would expand the story in so many directions, but naturally i should have known better. Do keep up the absolutely amazng work!

Oh, and i hope you had a merry christmas. Hopefully nobody will roast me for posting so long after the last reply!

[Kartr_Kana]

Jackass!! Don't post this long after the last chapter, it makes us think there's a new one up and we get very angry when we find out it's a retard like you

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Relax, Kartr. Any view is a good view, comments all gratefully recieved.

I have to admit this one isn't flowing as readily as it ought, I'm worrying much more about it as I write. Not so much the writing as the plot; I'm trying not to be too generous to the characters and probably failing.

Lennart is on a tightrope, between the light and the dark, that no-one manages to stay on for very long; he should be in more turmoil than he is, have to start letting that bite deeper.

Mirannon, incidentally, his midi count is high enough too- but the force simply doesn't touch him in the same way. It really does exist at right angles to reality for him, meaning little or nothing to his life and work.

Being the mad scientist that he is, arguably he's closer to the dark side, although what either side is likely to make of magnetic-containment fusion balloon animals...it was just one of those moments when I realised that something was probably possible.

Brenn, incidentally, is nuts. He's seriously proposing to spend his leave going on the equivalent of the old RN 'Perisher' submarine command qualification course.

First half of chapter 4 ought to be up in the next couple of days.

[Kartr_Kana]

See I thought this was my Christmas present and found out it wasn't I can't wait to read this next chapter though, the fusion chair will forever remain one of my favorite moments in fanfic history.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Hull 721 arc 2 ch 4

What would the captain do now? Wathavrah thought. In theory, he should be asking what he should do, taking the problem in his own style. In practise, he didn’t know.

Hell of a performance for a command officer, but he might at least be honest with himself. The procedure was clear enough, mechanically he knew what he was doing, what had to go where and when; at least, in theory.

Life would be so much simpler on a normal destroyer, he sighed to himself half meaning it. They had, not exactly broken, but taken extremely liberal interpretations of the rules and regulations, and in some ways, been handed the most severe punishment of all; being forced to live with the mess they had made.

For instance, the ship was going to undergo major surgery. That meant landing all the ordnance- all the way down to the contents of the ship’s arms lockers. Partly a security measure, to prevent things falling into the wrong hands through theft, but mostly simple safety to prevent something cooking off.

On Black Prince, that included the heavy ship to ship torpedoes they weren’t supposed to have, whose existence had to be concealed, which meant a complicated, awkward smuggling operation to get them off before some crazed yard worker braised his way through one.

Torps and missiles for the fighters, too- in fact, that had happened. HIMS Refractory, a Starburst class heavy cruiser/carrier, in a deepdock for major refit when Alliance raiders had hit. They hadn’t gone for the beached warship, they had hit the ordnance transports. That single raid accounted for maybe an eighth of the Alliance’s entire stock of proton torpedoes.

Keeping those secure was in theory the local force’s job, but Black Prince had four times the normal number of torpedo carrying fighters on board, and there were no guarantees the Corellians would be happy about the extra. The bunkers were low, but still over normal. Had to work out where to get more from, too.

Hypermatter; the remaining fuel would be pumped into shoreside storage toruses, except Black Prince’s own tanks were a third larger than normal. Drawn down heavily, yes, but still more than normal and a standing temptation to a crooked supply officer.

The crew’s personal property, they could take with them, engineering would be here anyway, petty theft wasn’t the problem. Grand theft ordnance was the issue. Hire storage space, arrange security for it which meant vetting private security firms.


That, and sort the less well organised members of the crew out with travel warrants and arrangements, there were still a few wounded who needed to be shipped to planetside hospitals- and half the medics volunteering to assist the local docs just to keep their hands in.

I had it easy before, Wathavrah thought. All I had to do was worry about blowing people up. Looks like it’s a kriffing sight harder to sort their lives out.

Beep from one of the consoles; a new item on, h’m, the visitor’s list. The running tally of who was coming aboard and who was departing, not actually sanctioned but simple good practise.

Look at the name and, oh, crap. Equarian Julez. Civilian consultant, Kuat Drive Yards- Fondor. ‘Consultant’ my arse, Wathavrah thought. Senior member of Kuat’s in house design staff come to see what kind of a mess we’ve made.

He was one of the core members of “the circle”, the team/committee effort of qualified Chief Designers at KDY continually snapping at the heels of the Head of the Design Team.


It was an open secret among the naval fraternity, that the Starfleet’s and the yards’ in house design teams were continually trying to one-up each other. Probably a good thing for the fleet, considering the ships that had come out of the process.

Kuat’s team had renovated an old frigate design as a high speed, high survivability assault ship over the objections of the bureau of naval construction, and then BNC had put one over on them by old Wal Blissex producing a neat, elegant little bombard destroyer- which was given to Rendili to build.

Corellian Engineering always tended to go their own separate way and relied on the civil market mainly, Rendili had pretty much surrendered to them over the Victory, but KDY asserted it’s independence and managed to split the bureau off from it’s end users by giving the fleet the Venator.

The bureau of naval construction tried to reassert itself by producing the initial design for the Imperator and ordering Kuat to manufacture it exactly as written- at the same time giving undue credit to the prima donna Llira Wessex, who seemed to assume that design talent was some kind of birthright.

Kuat had calmly tore up the initial design, rewrote it in house and given the fleet exactly what it wanted. Not without problems; there had been severe teething trouble, and such a scrambled design history that it was possible to cherry pick the performance and identify at least six distinct ‘variants’.

Finally, though, the working end of the Starfleet had it’s new mainstay. Game, set, match, the private contractor.

In theory, the bureau of naval construction was the right system; in practise, it was the wrong personnel. They had begun with a slew of rejects from the main design houses, some who had been refused for all the wrong reasons- like old Wal, who had simply been too radical for the times; and some who had been excluded for the right reasons like his daughter, who could not be trusted with a sharp stylus.

The in house design teams of the major yards could simply do better work than the starfleet’s own design arm. That would be true for at least the next two generations. CJ- the highly classified and semi legendary Chief Designer of the Imperator, and subsequently Head of the Design Team- and his legacy would be able to hold off the weight of authority to browbeat and money to hire away talent for at least that long.

It shouldn’t have been surprising that they were interested in what Mirannon and Corellian Engineering- well, really Mirannon- proposed to do to the ship. Rather frightening that they had achieved that kind of official notice, though.

Crap, Wathavrah thought. Have to warn the Chief, have to make sure all the minor violations were safely under cover, have to arrange some kind of presentation, have to- hold on a minute.


Who was this R.A dmmithh’somethingorother? Further down the list, slid in like some sort of ordinary nobody, or one of the journalists they had thankfully shed at Nguyen Station.

No, it wasn’t RA, it was R.Adm- extra double crap with glandular secretions on top, it was Imperial Centre’s hatchet man on an unscheduled inspection visit. Trying to catch them in a moment of maximum chaos.

Bidding fair to succeed, too. What to do, what kind of cover up to organise this time? The usual potemkin village guided tour? Unlikely- most senior officers were susceptible to that sort of thing, show them a trick to see through and they assumed they had got the better of you, but Thrawn would look for the trick within the trick, and the trick within that, and so on.

He was likely to bring his own agenda anyway, so setting up a tour would probably be pointless. Actually, maybe best to simply allow that to happen; let there be chaos. Plan nothing, and escort him through the hospital spaces and mess decks, show him round the launch bay- let the consequences of an unscheduled visit occur.

Being ostentatiously unready, that might just work. Warn Mirannon, of course- and try to get in touch with the captain; what a moment for him to be absent. Of course, the Admiral had timed it that way.


The captain was unreachable- had turned all his com devices off- but his aide was wandering around with a broad selection of classified material, and the security detail that mandated should be reachable.

A couple of relays later, the captain was on line. ‘Skipper? Problem. The admiral’s making an unscheduled inspection. Mithh’raw’nuruodo’s coming on board.’

Long pause. ‘Captain, are you all right?’

‘For a particular value of “all.”’ Lennart said; he sounded distracted over the comlink, mind astray. ‘Things sort of did just drop in the dreck, I’m not sure my being there would be any use to you. I need time to think. When did his staff tell you he was coming?’

‘The note arrived, what, five minutes ago, it says one hour’s notice.’ Wathavrah reported, trying not to let his voice sound like he felt- what the kriff was going on?

‘Expect him to arrive at the point of maximum possible embarrassment.’ Lennart said. ‘Right in the middle of whatever preparations you’ve made to pull the wool over his eyes, there he’ll be, he’ll time it carefully for that.’

‘I’d planned to go with the underwear hanging out technique.’ Wathavrah admitted.

‘Let Aleph-3 try that in person and see how he reacts.’ Lennart said, joking mechanically. ‘Seriously, that may be your best bet. What he expects isn’t to see chaos, that much is a certainty not an expectation; he expects to catch you distracted and off guard. Trust the crew, let them do their own thing. You and the command team deal with him.’

‘You think that’s wise?’ Wathavrah said, sceptically. ‘This is our mob you’re talking about.’

‘Nothing he can find out is going to be especially incriminating, no worse than the usual shower of minor order offences. The people who know too much know better than to admit it.’ Lennart said, thinking how true that was.

‘I’ve got nothing better.’ Wathavrah admitted. ‘I was going to pass a heads-up to engineering, get the most dubious people off as quickly as possible-‘

‘Right now, that’s me.’ Lennart admitted. ‘And it’s a bad idea. Don’t set up that much of a pattern. Especially, don’t let Pel Aldrem leave the ship.’

‘If the admiral goes looking for them?’ Wathavrah began.

‘If he does, he’ll find them, on board or not. Better to have them in a controlled environment.’ Lennart said, without the least little twitch in the voice as he described the ship as a controlled environment. ‘Think of all the things we’ve done that they can hold against us; the fallout from Adannan’s death is mine, what does that leave?’

‘Apart from the usual?’ Wathavrah asked, wearily. ‘The most damaging thing would be what, contact with the rebels I think. I don’t suppose the argument ‘well, it was all in a good cause’ is going to wash?’

‘No, and the next thing you were about to think doesn’t make sense either. Do you think you could have got away any more easily with dismembering a Jedi, under the Republic?’ Lennart asked.

‘Not as such, no. Although I don’t recall being tempted all that often, the only one I ever saw was a fighter jockey who spread himself across the side of a Munificent before I could take a dislike to him. I’ll do the conventionals, deck div knows the routine, the- ah, when it comes to dealing with rebels the other critical cases are with the legion or the wing. Or engineering.’

‘Which could be a bad thing, but he’s going to get at the facts eventually anyway- if he doesn’t let his own constructions get too far in the way. Incidentally, I’d start expecting him about now.’ Lennart cautioned.


In search of background and context, the admiral could have said, but the brief abstract of the refitting schedule he had found reduced that almost to the level of a secondary objective.

If Jorian Lennart was an artist to be understood through his works, the greatest of those was his ship and his crew. Not without collaborators, but the man should be there.

The accessway he had chosen to come aboard by was crammed with people moving in the other direction, crewmen and a handful of crewwomen disembarking, going on leave- or leaving the service for good to listen to the chatter of some of them.


They were an ill assorted bunch, widely varying degrees of fitness and standard of dress- one offensive technicolour dazzle camo shirt nearly earned it’s wearer brig time for offending the admiral’s artistic sensibilities.

There was a substantial proportion of near human personnel, but almost no non humans- fewer, in fact, than average. Was Lennart a racist? He had occasionally made noises like one to deceive his superiors, was it actually so?

It would be nothing unusual in the Starfleet if he was, in fact in Thrawn’s estimation it was rather more probable than not. As a man who largely led by personality rather than the book, unsaid things, unspoken sympathies would be of high importance.

That meant a close knit, like minded ‘in’ group would be crucial to the way he actually ran his ship, and would inevitably polarise against those who did not share the same outlook, those who reacted differently.

It was not how the Starfleet was supposed to run, and yet listening to the chatter among the crew it seemed to be effective. It was just unexpected, like finding a master of Pularchian Realisationalism enjoyed Aqulemaeii polyphony in his spare time.

There was one distinct drawback to attempting to study them; they, in their turn, were attempting to study him.

Some of them had places to be, looked him over, saluted and kept going; there were a handful of stormtroopers, serving as shore patrol and traffic control- they leapt to attention, ordered the crew to keep moving, and one of them politely requested that he wait for a senior officer and an appropriate escort.


Rear-Admiral Thrawn had missed order 66; he was aware of how the majority of his peers in the fleet treated the stormtrooper corps- like part of the background. He paid them no more attention than he would any of the thousands of items of talking furniture he had come across.

There had been a fad for such things on a few of the core worlds- chairs that advised on posture, bowls that gave recipe advice, holoceptors that criticised the viewer’s taste, the like. It had been shortlived, as people invariably became irritated with them and shorted them out or smashed them.

Thrawn had largely ignored them- they were programmed with the common knowledge at best, his judgement was invariably better than that- although one had caused a major disciplinary incident.

There had been a speaking chair in the junior wardroom of his flagship at the time- during the cleanup of the failed Hapan campaign; some of the junior officers had reprogrammed it with a pop-psych package and his voice patterns, tweaked into the squeaky and supercilious.

Clear and flagrant disrespect; he had been able to identify and punished the individuals responsible, in fact it had been a refreshing diversion, but it had been part of a pattern.

That tour had begun on a sour note, and they had offered him nothing but disdain and disrespect; he had driven them hard, hammered them into shape, and ended it with their professional admiration- and utter personal loathing.

In fact, he had regarded the majority of them as nothing more than talking furniture, too. He was distinctly surprised when the stormtrooper sargeant stepped in front of him and held up a hand, motioning him to stop.

‘Sargeant, you do know how to read a rank tab, do you not?’ Thrawn asked the faceless trooper.

‘Of course, Rear-Admiral, and so do they. It’s for your own safety, the crew are aware that you’re the investigating officer.’

That was something worth thinking about. ‘Are you suggesting that they would offer physical violence to a senior officer?’ If it was merely a trick to buy time, while some kind of deception was arranged, it was a poor and risky one.


Looking at them…no, it was more than that. The crew’s mood was distinctly ugly. If not the length of violence, then at least a criminal degree of disrespect.

Not as bad as some, really. Thrawn was painfully aware how lucky he had been. Although spending high proportions of a career directly under Palpatine’s eye could hardly be called being lucky with his superiors, he had been generally fortunate with his inferiors.

The unfortunate fact was that the Starfleet had too few enemies to go around. For all the discipline, for all the endless exhortations about the Alliance and the war against revanchism, and the occasional major flare up, it was essentially a peacetime service.

It was a struggle to find people willing to join what was, under the glamour and propaganda, an organisation for wasting time in a brutally inconvenient manner. A practical technical education was about all it really offered, and you could get the same by going to jail- although the warders in most were slightly more polite than the average petty officer.

The expansion had further diluted professional standards until, in most sector groups, it was a case of the blind leading the blind, and precious little pressure to reach a higher standard anyway.

Oversector Imperial Centre was better off in that they could skim other forces for promising personnel, that produced better crews and that was a factor that Thrawn had to acknowledge, but what he was looking at now was a wartime crew, no question about it.


Hardened, close knit, driven back on their own loyalties, and no longer giving a damn about the Starfleet’s pomp and circumstance, about the abstract lessons of duty and obedience and dress and deportment. They were perfectly capable of doing the unthinkable.

‘Not suggesting as such, admiral- but you are here to hold the captain up to judgement, we all know that, and it would be unwise to put temptation in their way.’ The stormtrooper sergeant informed him, judiciously.

Thrawn was about to ask for further information on that, when he spotted a face in the crowd. The files and memos he had drawn, looking for data on the incident, had included the man he had just seen, he was sure of it.

Fair haired, highly peculiar- wearing an enlisted man’s uniform tunic with a lieutenant’s rank squares, over a multicoloured, eye- paining shirt embroidered with leaping fish. Arm in arm with a woman with a rating’s cap, wearing a leather bodice and pleated skirt. That was certainly not uniform, although given the tendencies of some admirals, it was only a matter of time.

What had his name been- Aldrem, that was it, the gunner who had fired on his own ship in response to the broadcast indicting Kor Alric Adannan, and in all probability the actual murderer.

He had noticed the admiral, and glared at him briefly before moving on in the crowd. There was something of a retinue, a group of equally eccentrically dressed men behind him. Worth questioning.

‘Sargeant, those men are material to my inquiry, detain them.’

The stormtrooper obviously didn’t want to, but wove his way through the stream of people in the direction of the gun team; just as a messenger caught them up.


Thrawn heard the tail end of a brief argument- ‘Is there a reason? No, well- ah. Why couldn’t you have said that to begin with?’ As the gunner caught sight of the admiral. Ah, crap, Aldrem thought. Never an artillery piece around when you need one.

‘Lieutenant- Aldrem, is it not?’ Thrawn said, knowing full well that it was.

Pel Aldrem didn’t have to guess what the rear- admiral wanted him for. He didn’t expect objecting to do him any good, but as definitely in the frame of mind to object.

‘Admiral.’ He said, wearily. ‘We’re on our way to a wake, we’re going to check into a hotel and drink our sorrows away. When we’ve recovered from that, there’s going to be a wedding and by the time I personally have recovered from that, it should be two months later and I’m going to have to get back to work.

If you can hold your drink and hold up your end of a bar room brawl- at the wake, not at the wedding-‘ he added to Jhareylia by his side, not to Thrawn- ‘then you’re welcome to join us, but otherwise we’d prefer it if you got out of the way.’

Well, I wasn’t expecting that, Thrawn had to admit to himself. Flagrant, open disrespect of that sort was common enough in the less motivated end of the fleet, and constituted a sufficiently good reason to have stormtroopers around.

Any economic recruit, inner city ex punk, could have said the same; probably with more swearwords, waving of arms and obvious menace. Despite the evidence of his dress sense, the admiral thought, the man in front of him wasn’t a punk, he was one of the best gunners in one of the elite outfits of the Starfleet.

Not a man of empty words, then. He and his team had been almost the only professionals on a ship with a crew so useless the captain had preferred to beach half of them rather than take them into a fight. With the stress of that, and the hints in the file of what had happened before attachment to Dynamic, small wonder.

From his service record, there was a definite discontinuity between the frequency of his encounters with the law and the actual punishment he had received for it. It looked a bit like a vendetta, a divisional officer out to get him.

In practise, getting into that sort of feud in itself made a man liable not to be passed on and up, but looking at him it was clear Lennart had been fiddling the record to retain his services. He almost certainly knew better.

‘Not going to happen, Lieutenant. You are a material witness at the very least, I do not expect to have to ask again.’

They glared at each other for a moment, Aldrem well aware he didn’t have a legal position worthy of the name, wondering how to cover up all his other indiscretions.

It might actually be better to punch the admiral out and run, but even if he made it, who apart from the obvious would employ an ex Starfleet gunner with what would probably be a fifty thousand credit bounty on his head?


‘Where, on board?’ Aldrem sighed heavily, and said. With the lads behind him, he probably could have managed to drop the rear admiral and shoot his way past the stormtroopers, but it would have been an escape to nowhere- and taken too many other people down with him.

‘The scene of the crime?’ Thrawn said, trying not to sound too amused. ‘No, I do not think I shall leave you under the guard of your friends. Sargeant,’ to the stormtrooper, ‘escort these men to whatever the yard uses for detention cells.’

‘These men.’ Hruthhal said. ‘We were all in it together.’

‘In what, precisely?’ Thrawn refused to make it that obvious by leaping at the declaration. They were not the prime targets in this, their status was too low. Still, having a few low level scapegoats never hurt, and self incrimination made a court of inquiry run so much more smoothly.

‘Don’t answer that question without a defending officer.’ Jhareylia said to Hruthhal, appreciating his solidarity with her man, but feeling more like kicking him it was such a damned fool thing to say.

‘You could probably use a brain surgeon, too.’ Aldrem added, and to the admiral ‘I pulled the trigger, fired from battery direction, the actual responsibility is mine.’

‘Deciding where and how deeply guilt lies is my privilege, Lieutenant.’ The rear-admiral pointed out. ‘Take them away.’

There were more than enough stormtroopers there now to do that, and perhaps- actually, Thrawn reasoned, it would be well to appear to follow this up now. He knew where all the key personnel were supposed to be, any deviation from that would be interesting in itself.

Leave the ship to interrogate Aldrem and his retinue; the stormtroopers would report of course and there would be a friend of the court along to support them, but that would appear to leave the rest of them out of the spotlight for the tie being- so why not do both?

Take Aldrem, prepare to grill him, then double back; arrive on the ship in the midst of them as they were scrambling to deal with that crisis. Yes, that could get useful results.


Follow the stormtroopers, then, and wait half an hour- a little remedial revision on the key personnel of the incident. Thrawn did not have the appearance and reputation of a bookish man who read widely in his profession; he was, but took care not to appear so.

Something else that had had to change, over the years. On his first real exposure to galactic society he had been a voraciously eager student- so much more to know, so much to take in. It was not the path to advancement- looking as if you were trying too hard was one sure way to earn the enmity of your fellow officers.

The clones had entered service preprogrammed; the long- service prewar fleet had been less expert, but close. The names and numbers who had done so much to set the tone of the Starfleet were, after all, the leisured class. Looking as if you didn’t know, and needed to be told, was a badge of shame.

Of course, so many of them didn’t know, or knew much less than they thought. The average dashing, unstudious, aristocratic or mock-aristo officer might have the respect and affection of his men, but he was much less likely to know where to lead them to.

Even those that were able among them- and the name of Admiral Lord Nathanael Convarrian came to mind- tended to resent ability that was nothing but, feel that there was something unsafe, even revolutionary about it. A threat to their positions and way of life, they were having enough trouble weathering the changes of Empire as it was.

One of the reasons that he was still a rear-Admiral, despite having held commands well in excess of what his rank would justify, was that he, Mithh’raw’nuruodo, was a weapon in Palpatine’s hands against the arrogance and independence of the fleet- he was that threat, and they had done their best to keep him down because of it.

A left handed dagger to the sword of the Imperial Executor Vader, perhaps, for now. That would change, if he had anything to do with it. Although, whereabouts on the spectrum of gentlemen and players did Jorian Lennart fall?

Was he truly on it at all? Old Republic fleet, long service professional, but no great heritage and no home other than his ship- still a misfit and an anarchist, even in a Captain’s uniform.

He was a studious man- a former tactical instructor, after all- but also took good care not to look it, even if Thrawn doubted he had to resort to the old ‘meditation’ dodge.

Aldrem was one of his, probably had more personal loyalty to him than to the fleet- it would be interesting interrogating the gunner Lieutenant, get him to wander away from the incident to shipboard life in general.


Leafing through the AAR and making mental notes on what he wanted to know more about passed a little time- he picked his moment, decided they would be busy enough to be a soft target.

Round the last cormer to the boarding ramp- and be confronted by a full platoon of stormtroopers in parade formation, rifles at the present. All right, couldn’t win every time.

There to welcome him on board, and almost certainly to plague him with the inevitable potemkin village tour, was the chief navigation officer who had just come back on board himself.

If what was written in the files was anything to go by, he was an average, workaday officer, not very different from the fleet standard. If what was between the lines was more important, and it was, he was a superb shiphandler and a close member of Lennart’s inner circle.

‘Welcome aboard, Rear-Admiral; I understand you paid us a brief visit earlier.’ Brenn said, looking carefully neutral. He didn’t have the authority to contradict the admiral, and had more sense to argue with him, on that ground at least.

‘I did.’ Thrawn said, equally insouciant. ‘A person of material interest to the inquiry. I’m sure you understand.’

‘He has the right to counsel, to defence if it comes to that.’ Brenn pointed out.

‘Really? You’d be prepared to go to those lengths, insist on full and formal procedure, for a man whose record surely reveals him to be a permanent disciplinary problem?’ Thrawn asked, baiting the navigator. It was almost rhetorical.

Brenn was not quite daft enough to give the answer the rear-admiral was expecting. ‘He has become something of a project- the regulatory branch advise against transferring him out until they manage to get him to behave long enough to put up a good conduct stripe. Is there something specific you’re interested in?’

‘Assumptions of relevance at this stage would be premature.’ Thrawn said, answering more than one question and delivering an insult he was sure Brenn was sharp enough to get. ‘I presume you have the standard inspection tour?’

‘I presumed you would want nothing to do with the usual tour. I have other duties, amongst other things I have to prepare a case as Lieutenant Aldrem’s defending officer, Lieutenant EC-1218 will be able to show you around.’ Brenn suggested.

That would be the senior officer- fifth, composite, regiment, third batallion, boarding troops, specialists in ship to ship work. He saluted, as Brenn left to go hide some evidence, wondering how much of this he could land on someone else’s desk, and whether that gree hypersail plan might prove a useful distraction for the Admiral as well as for Captain Lennart.


‘What would you like to see, Rear-Admiral?’ the stormtrooper lieutenant asked.

Thrawn decided to play a little logic game, see just how far they had been corrupted. They were supposed to be responsible for internal security, after all. ‘Show me the most incriminating thing on the ship.’

What would the talking furniture do with that? Brief, impassive stare- helmet com from one to another no doubt. ‘Admiral if you would follow me- honour guard fall in.’ the lieutenant announced, and moved off.

Thrawn’s own retinue followed, and the lieutenant led them past an iris hatch that the rear-admiral wasn’t sure was supposed to be there, andwas sure he heard hiss open behind them after they were out of sight. Down two decks, was it just imagination or were the deckheads lower than they ought to have been?

The standard called for three metre height, partly for equipment moving but mainly for visual effect, he was sure they had chopped at least half a metre off that. Definitely some kind of reconstruction, that would have been called major on any other ship but around here was probably the equivalent of moving the sofa.

It was only necessary to look at the thing to realise the chief engineer’s file was a pack of lies. A finely balanced blend of compliment and reprimand designed to allow him to keep his present job. Viewed individually, each incident made sense, there was always a rationale for the outcome.

Viewed collectively, it was obvious that every excuse in the book had been employed at one time or another. Producing three major weapon mounts for the axial battery, and now proposing another four for the bow, was the act of a maestro. It may be depriving the fleet of an asset to leave him here.

Where were they going? A maze of twisty turny corridors, all alike- the plumbing on this ship must be a cat’s cradle. There wasn’t even supposed to be an accommodation block here.

Ah, the heads. What was this going to be, a spice farm? A secret transmitter keyed to rebel intelligence? Stashed datadiscs of blackmail material? Was this where they did their conspiring?

There was a row of polished steel mirrors set into the wall above a line of sinks. EC- 1218 pointed to one.


Thrawn could take a hint. ‘Very funny, Lieutenant. Have you been deputised to speak for the rest of the legion?’

‘Not officially, rear-admiral, we are all of one mind.’ The stormtrooper said, although that mind was at the moment closest to the opinions of strike team omega-17-blue.

‘Really? I wasn’t aware.’ The rear-admiral said, callously, suddenly aware of the ridiculousness of the situation. A stormtrooper, a piece of equipment, deciding- daring- to tell him what the situation was? Absurd.

Perhaps it knew something useful. Perhaps it had forgotten that it did not have the right to an opinion. ‘Why did you, collectively and individually, allow this to happen? You failed in your function. You did not protect an agent of the privy council.’

‘There was…reasonable doubt that Kor Alric Adannan was acting in the interests of the empire.’ EC-1218 looked almost as surprised to be saying the words as Thrawn was to be hearing them.

It would be wasted breath to ask who had planted that doubt- as if there was could be more than one suspect. If this was the way it was- if Lennart’s definite talent for military manoeuvre translated to a talent for political manoeuvre as well- then it put the situation even beyond understanding at first glance.

It wasn’t a snap decision, couldn’t have been; they must have fenced with each other over an extended period, before one of Lennart’s people had put a term to it with a heavy turbolaser fired into his own ship.

That meant there was evidence which Lennart had not wanted to show him, a whole discussion and debate which there must be some trace of.

And here he was, in a toilet block with a handful of compromised, possibly disloyal stormtroopers. What a thoroughly ridiculous place for- anything, really. Where to go, who to grill now- the chief engineer. Lennart’s right hand man, and the maniac responsible for the mechanical state of the ship.


That could be interesting, on many grounds- and the basis of a potential quid pro quo. If they were only mildly guilty- and they were almost certainly more than that, but the business had been committed to his judgement- then they could be forced to buy their way out of trouble by sharing some of their tricks and procedures.

Assuming that they weren’t right; that Adannan had not actually been plotting to turn against the empire. Which there must have been at least enough evidence of to partially convince the supposedly incorruptible stormtrooper corps. Hmm.

‘Lieutenant, I would like to speak with the chief engineer- Commander Mirannon, is it not, lead me to him-‘ at that point, one of the staff interrupted. ‘Admiral, message from security, your prisoners have been remanded into the custody of the local office of the Imperial Security Bureau.’

A sudden flash of cold fury- how dare they. Not enough to dull the intellect that was saying it was a stupidly risky move, could only have been done by an idiot or someone with something to gain. Who would not want him to interrogate the actual murderer? Was this a pointer towards conspiracy after all?

If so, how genuine? It fit a pattern- but there were gaps, he needed more information. ‘Lieutenant, get me to a terminal, now.’

‘Of course, admiral, regulatory office P060D2- admiral, I’m getting a report from our team dirtside, that might have been overtaken by events. Apparently they escaped from custody- or were rescued by rebels, the information is somewhat vague.’