Hull 721, plot arc the second

[Simon_Jester]

The problem is the context- if the crew of Black Prince knows enough to know it can be done, then others should too, and there should be consequences of that elsewhere in the EU. Which we don't see.

So if this were a novel (which it isn't), I would advocate removing this. But it's not, so I don't.

[Crayz9000]

ECR has a point, though. The technology is too bloody obvious to anyone who's taken a primer in hyperspace physics and/or repulsor theory. The only answer that makes sense is that if anyone had connected the dots in the past, they were too shocked by the implications that they promptly buried it, and put things in place to make sure that anyone else who drew the same conclusions and tried to publicize the results would hit a wall of denial or be ridiculed out of the room.

When the Saccorian Crisis hit, the operation was basically sponsored by the Triad and ran under the direct jurisdiction of the Governor-General of Corellia, in as near-complete secrecy as they could manage.

[Simon_Jester]

Are we sure it's that obvious? Wasn't there supposed to have been a protracted campaign of research going into the weaponization of Centerpoint?

[Vianca]

Are we sure it's that obvious? Wasn't there supposed to have been a protracted campaign of research going into the weaponization of Centerpoint?

Well, we do have odd research projects.

[Crayz9000]

One of the points raised in the Corellian Trilogy was that all repulsor technology is based on the same geometry as Centerpoint's "mountains", but miniaturized down to the micro scale. So really, anyone who had taken a course on repulsor theory should be able to recognize what's at the heart of Centerpoint Station.

Whether or not they connect the dots from that point is another story.

[Simon_Jester]

Um, would someone not intimately familiar with the 'guts' of Centerpoint, the control mechanisms and operating parameters of the machinery, be able to deduce that "the station is a giant-ass repulsor" translates into "the station can make stars go nova from fifty thousand light years away?"

[InsaneTD]

There is also the fact that only those who know what's in centrepoint would be able to make those leaps. How common knowledge was the internal structure of centrepoint?

Just a quick side point, I though repulsor tech only worked in gravity, what would centrepoints repulsor react off?

[Crayz9000]

Well, considering that the inside of Centerpoint at this point in time is filled with Corellian settlers and known as the "Hollowtown", I would say it's very easy for someone to get inside and take a look at the north and south "polar mountains".

There are a lot of dots that have to be connected before someone realizes just how powerful Centerpoint really is.

To answer your question, InsaneTD, repulsors "push off" gravity. As a more esoteric note, the description and precise geometry of Centerpoint's repulsor arrays is a direct reference/homage to the inertialess drive system described in Arthur C Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama. It therefore goes without saying that if you can "push off" of a gravity well, the same technology also allows you to "pull" -- so normal repulsors are basically highly developed counterparts of tractor beams.

Centerpoint happens to have two massive tractor-repulsor arrays aimed directly at each other, which basically makes it the Swiss Army Knife of SW superweapons.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I'll have to do some more explaining on this one, which means fitting it in somewhere, but there's basically a long complicated causal chain that starts with the hyperdrive core malfunction in ch's 5 and 20 or so of the main story arc- it slammed hard into the "relativity, causality, FTL, pick two" problem, folded itself into what was described as a solipsistic time machine and raised a lot of interesting questions along the way; and the path of finding answers runs largely through Goran Caldor- who was the dockyard manager supposed to be in charge of the refit before Mirannon decided to do his own thing and scare most of Corellian Engineering with his horrendously dubious working practises along the way.

Caldor has all the time, resources, and access that should be needed to solve the problem, and would quite like to get one back on the Starfleet engineer. Although maybe not in that manner.

The line of logic actually runs through hyperspace cannon, library search and rederivations of first principles looking for similar problems and how to cope with them, going all the way back to pre- Republic, Rakata hyperdrive- which is essentially Force- based technology dependent on the dark side for much of the fine control and navigation. It's a dead end. There's no great leap of logic in grasping that Rakata drive reverse engineers extremely poorly because so much of it is mysticism rather than engineering.

Parallel solutions, yes, but there are too many years unaccounted for in there when the network of hyperspace cannons was dominant- so what they end up thinking happens is that modern-style internally initiating self sustaining hyperdrive evolves slowly, inspired by but taking little or nothing directly from Rakata technology, but hyperspace cannon evolve much more quickly, quickly enough by comparison that you have to look for a way to chop a lot of years off that. Not starting from scratch is one big advantage, right, what could be the source? Ah. QED.

Anyway, chapter of Squelch should be up in, well, a few minutes.

[Simon_Jester]

I can see how hyperspace cannon might hinge on the example of Centerpoint- what I do think would be just as well kept out of the picture in a hypothetical novel version is the implication that any sufficiently technically competent bunch can deduce that Centerpoint is a deadly weapon.

Or... maybe I'm slow, are you saying that Our Heroes came upon this realization through an unlikely and not very repeatable chain of events, inspired by the combination of unholy curiosity and the aforesaid exotic-failure-mode hyperdrive unit?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Moving swiftly on...

Basically, Centrepoint is hiding in plain sight, and the easiest way to do that is to have it look obvious- yes, it was, but all the lessons from it have been learnt, it's old technology, belongs in- practically is- a museum, look at what we can do now, nothing to see here. And so it was and so it remained, until the conditions of the galactic civil war got a lot of people thinking on unfamiliar lines, re- examining the obvious. Caldor and Mirannon won't have been the only ones.

Anyway,





Lennart could tell Severian, Aleph-3, had a solution or at least thought she had, and didn't like it very much. When is she going to start trying to get me to use the name she's picked out for herself and doesn't think I know about, he wondered- and is her plan the same as my null hypothesis?

Mirannon looked as if he had figured out some of the further problems involved in Centrepoint, and had the sense to say nothing about them for the time being.

It was Shandon Rythanor who brought up the bogeyman again. 'I don't suppose we're prepared to be cynical enough to just- tolerate this? Say "meh, politics" and just get on with the job?'

'I was.' Aleph-3 said. 'I got better.'

'You said it yourself,' Mirannon reminded him, 'all the trends are negative. There's always the bottom centimetre of sludge in the sump of the system- an irreducible minimum of bad politics that you'll never do away with; but this isn't it, not with the mystic halfwits in charge.'

'The concept of the legitimate target is all that keeps me from waking up screaming every morning.' Aldrem said, and only Aleph-3 openly snorted at his apparent hypocrisy. 'I don't trust these people's sense of who it's good to shoot.'

'I'd trust the mould in the showers before most of the names on this list.' Franjia said. 'At least if the spores poison me, it's without malice.'


'I don't know.' Aron, the ex gang kid, said. 'Look at these names without the rank, without the position, without the arms of the state business; they're thugs. Gang, alley, gutter hard men, blessed by genetics maybe but but essentially violent, arrogant, pushy, showy, egotistical, vengeful- pan-galactic racketeers.

Standing up to them is less good an idea than it sounds.'

'Tactically you may be right,' Brenn admitted, 'but we can't just fold like that; not if we want to be anything at all, anything more than someone else's pawn playing out someone else's idea.'

'...you do realise you're wearing a uniform?' Aron said.

'Thank you for confirming the stereotype.' Brenn snapped at him. 'I always suspected most fighter pilots don't understand the difference between warriors and soldiers.'

'Yes, in one you're a relatively free agent and in the other you shut up and do what you're told, and this,' Aron waved at the holodisplay, 'the whole space sailing bit left for the moment, is not soldiering we're talking about.'


'Take the hit on that one,' Lennart told Brenn, 'he's got a point- there really is less difference between gang rank and aristocratic patronage than almost anybody involved wants to face up to.

The only choice a lot of people get, under the old Republican system too, is whose minion to be. If you think that's the best we can manage, just another term in the series of a long civilisational failure, if that's what existence is, I'll swallow my bile and start looking for a dark lord to follow who isn't excessively odious.

That can't be the best we can manage to come up with.'

Mirannon, probably the only person who could get away with saying it, said 'Isn't that how you- we both- ended up in the Imperial Starfleet?'

Lennart opened his mouth to shout at the chief, took a deep breath, and changed tack.


'The essential difference,' he said, 'or what had better be the essential difference for the purposes of this discussion is that a soldier fights for a cause, for a community, for something that you could squeeze under the heading of a civilisation, and the warrior fights for self and survival- often because of the absence of a community and a civilisation.

There's no civilisation in the gutter, and there's none at the level these people operate at- and one other thing. The soldier can always revert to being a warrior. Spacemen, not so much- we have the inherent attachment to the ship and the community that carries with it.

Maybe that brought a bit of cushioning, being a subset like that, shielded from the main line of things happening- I hope it did, I meant it to. Not for quite this good a reason, though.'

'You would also have to say,' Brenn got the point back, 'that reversion to primitive happens- soldiers descend into being warriors- because of the failure of civilisation, too; even if that's actually what they were fighting for.'

'One to you.' Lennart admitted. 'And for honesty's sake it's worth noting that the traditions and standards the Old Republic expected- shut up and soldier, essentially- are one of the main reasons so little of the fleet defected to the Alliance.'


Severian made a noise that was somewhere between sigh, groan and growl. 'Well?' Lennart asked her.

'Where does your name come on this list?' she asked. 'You do not have to be an outsider in this, you have as much or more potential in the force than many of these names and a stronger base outside it.' She sounded as if she hated to bring it up, which could be sincere, or it could be triple- think.

'How good a record,' Mirannon asked, 'do attempts to fight the dark side with it's own weapons have?' he sounded as if he already knew the answer.

'Near- total failure.' she confirmed. 'Three months ago I'd have been turning somersaults at the idea; got you at last.' she added to Lennart.

'Has there been any better record involved in faking it?' Lennart asked.


Of course, she thought to herself once she had recovered her coherence, he would come up with some sort of lunatic stunt like that...still, he had been wanted for terrorist offences against the senate in person, and had managed to hide in plain sight for more than twenty years now.

It was still insane. 'We're talking about people who can feel the texture of your soul, and you expect to be able to fake it?'

'Yes.' he said, deadpan.

I really shouldn't be surprised, she thought. 'The record is...better, but still enormously bad.' she admitted. 'The dark side usually does better at infiltrating the light. Jedi plants in the armies of the dark side, expected to behave in ways that make them look like genuine dark siders, genuinely fall because of that- vastly more often than not.

Actually, being cocky and self- confident enough to think you can get away with it is a pretty good indication that at the very least, you're doing it for all the wrong reasons.'

'I was going to say that's essentially what the conspirators are doing, infiltrating the dark side, but it isn't, is it?' Rythanor said. 'You don't actually have to be loyal to your superiors to be loyal to the dark side.'


'By the theory of the egotistical side of the force, no, but the practise of the dark side seems to involve a fantastic amount of backstabbing, dominance games, blackmail- in general, trying to suppress each other's egos.' Lennart said.

'Does Palpatine even worry about this, or does he enjoy watching them squabble? Is it actually all about the survival of the fittest- the dark side does seem to be a stang take the hindmost, only the survivors count kind of business, does the act of losing make the dead irrelevant- more so than usual in politics, anyway?

If we can square the paperwork, we can get breathing and thinking time at least- provided we stay out of physical contact I can probably bluff as one as far as that goes.

One big problem with that, though. Inquisitor Lanu Pasiq. Known to us now from two directions- she's on Corellia at the moment, with a knife sharpened for me and looking for a place to stick it in.

She seems to have gone down a very strange road, when they ran out of jedi to hunt- which she realised very early on- she basically started moonlighting for Black Sun. Evidently without the sense to take her nose filters with her though.'


'We think we have her jammed at source- she's pulled rank on CorSec and is trying to use them to gather a stone bucket for use on us.' Rythanor stated. 'She's making herself so massively unpopular in the process, though, that we've had, hm, twenty- seven separate people approach us with various offers of help or information against her.

At least twenty- five of them appear to be genuine, too. I haven't had the heart, or the rush of stupidity to the brain, to tell them how thoroughly penetrated they are and that we know it all already- although I am thinking of submitting a bid to replace their hopelessly vulnerable legacy systems about five minutes before we finally leave.

She's been going over the details of the incidents we've managed to cause here, looking for ammunition- looking for something to use against us, and finding what we hoped- nothing we've done yet has made the people genuinely angry. Technically we're guilty as sin, on many things, but not in the court of public opinion.

That and we have the whole military expediency aspect to wriggle out whenever we need to- we'd never have got away with most of this at Kuat, but here? She's working a bad approach, and it can't be long now before she realises it and reverts to type.'


'Her first move is too obvious.' Lennart disagreed. 'An attack on dependents, draw us out- not necessarily mine; she has the reputation of a plotter, with a sarcastic streak. I'd expect her to strike for probably one of yours, less alert but deserving our protection so we'd have to turn out anyhow, likely a kidnapping- buy time and draw attention.

Then possibly double back to my kin while the first rescue is still in the planning stages. It's not ego, I'd be happier if that's all it was, then you could shout at me; I really am her primary target, though, the object is to get me out in the open and reacting emotionally and ineffectively- and Pel, Gethrim, you're a close joint second. Look to your hostages to fortune.'

Neither of them had very much in that line, and certainly not near Corellia; both of them, and Brenn, and Aleph-3, said the same thing more or less simultaneously. 'Pre-emption?'

'If you can come up with something that doesn't depend on the dark side.' Lennart agreed, mentally kicking himself. If he hadn't been able to spot that one then Pasiq was half- way to success. 'I don't want to repeat the fallout of Kor Alric's death.'

'Easy.' Aleph-3 couldn't resist saying. 'She's got her dubious side, yes? Use it- have her deniably shot by rival or renegade elements within Black Sun.' She didn't need to add, or fake it so it looks that way.


'That,' Lennart admitted, 'has the elegance of beauty about it- remind me to hit myself gently on the head with something later.'

'Can I do it for you?' Aleph-3 said.

'Can I trust your definition of gently?' he said. 'We have her files, too- there's very little fudging needing doing, it's inherently plausible. We might even be able to arrange it, but that might take more time than she'll need to move herself. Where and when?'

'Ideally during one of the abduction events. We might need to leave out bait to get the timing to work, but for maximum chaos and confusion and her clearly in the middle of doing something dubious, away from CorSec, it would fit.' Rafaella looked questioningly at her- she could guess who was likely to be the bait.

'I like it, in principle. The general list?' Lennart said, pointing at the holodisplay.


'It would be better for the galaxy, and the empire, if as many as possible of these people were dead, yes?' Mirannon said. 'This isn't a philosophical problem, it's a criminal problem.'

Brenn finished the thought. 'So- what side do we have to be on, what state do we have to be in, to make that happen?'

'The empirical strikes back.' Lennart laughed. 'We've gone far too long without shooting anything if I'm starting to overthink things to this degree. Although, think very carefully before deciding to change that.' he glared at Aldrem.

'It's not going to be good enough for the new galaxy and the new politics, though; the brandishing of shiny swords is hardly sufficient qualification for supreme government...despite the numerous occasions on which it actually has been.


Internal renegades it'll have to be, then. We more or less have to be part of the Imperial Starfleet in name to get the logistic support we need to function- the Alliance possibly could, but whether they would, I doubt.

The access we need to get at these people, too. Actually, when it comes to faking it and the dark side, the ship's in much better state than the paperwork. it was a high proportion of the datashufflers who decided to buy themselves out, and some crosstraining is badly in order. Or more protocol droids.

Squadron's said surprisingly little, considering just how much we never got properly authorised.'

'Not at my end.' Mirannon said. 'I've had endless queries from Captain-Constructor Sholokhov- literally, two of them were recursive loops. Much of it was technical detail, but there's a lot about how we managed to get somebody to sign off on this. I'd have sent a less confident answer if I'd realised we hadn't.'

'Don't say it- another problem that faking it on the dark side might be the best way to solve.' Lennart groaned. 'We have the authority of the yard to try first.'


'Actually, what are Rear-Admiral Rawlin's politics?' Brenn brought up. 'He might be happy about the fact that we're not planning to defect in the near future, but that might not be enough. Actually I don't know him well enough to be sure.'

'A cynic but a professional.' Lennart said. 'There's a lot wrong with the way things are now, but the alternatives seem worse, so follow the oaths, do your job, don't crap on anyone who doesn't deserve it, and hope for a better world to emerge at the end of it all.'

'I'm not so confident.' Mirannon dissented. 'He's a big man, and in a trade where that matters- he's never really been weak, never really not been able to cope. He doesn't, down at gut- level, understand life on the shitty end of the stick. Broadly I'd agree, but in a pinch he's more likely to break in favour of establishment and authority.'

'You have more mass on you than he does.' Rythanor pointed out.

'Mirannon nodded, but said 'In a crisis his strength gets him loyalty and obedience from his people. All the self- confidence of strength does for me is a slightly better ratio of thinking to panicking time- you can't wrestle a hypermatter reactor, and they also don't respond to personal appeals that well.'


'I think we can trust him- all right, up to a point. Not with everything we're doing and why, certainly not. Although I do wonder what sort of encounter with the dark side it would take to shake that.' Lennart said.

'At region, Admiral Lord Convarrian, now, he's one of the old names and numbers. They do have competent data security- they have more to lose than other people's money- and wardroom gossip only stretches so far; I don't know enough about his family and their business to be sure, but there is a lot of the Old Republic about him.

I'd be surprised if the ISB had much confidence in him and wasn't watching him, and if he hadn't noticed and was at least keeping his options open- but also if he was willing to make the first move.

Probably has met enough people on this list to have had that kind of personal clash, which is worth thinking about- but shows no sign of it. It's only safe to proceed as if he's Authority's man.'


'When it comes to that, we're already basically waiting for the other lightsabre to drop, aren't we?' Aldrem pointed out. 'Technically I'm innocent, even got the decoration to prove it, but that was dubious as hell.'

'I did stage- manage it that way.' Lennart admitted. 'The silence of the Dark Side- I'd really expect something to have happened by now. Rear- Admiral Thrawn was chasing his own agenda- on license from the very highest office, but his own methods and ends. Pasiq's chasing her own agenda.

Did Adannan have so few friends, no- one willing to try to find out what really happened, or are we just being given enough rope to hang ourselves? If that is true then we could probably rig an orbital elevator by now.

We've done this by the indirect route, I don't want to go probing directly for risk of triggering a response we're unready to cope with- but Pasiq has left us little choice, and we shall use her as a stepping- stone.


Perhaps that way she can be brought to strike directly at me rather than at you- the risk will have to be taken sooner or later, so best at a time and in a manner of our choosing.

We're not ready to jump outsystem, otherwise I'd do that- but we are actually at the point for main sublight engine trials, including handling trials, which we may as well try out in the cometary belt.'

'Actually further on than that.' Mirannon said. 'Another advantage of legacy servers with codes in the public domain these fifteen thousand years- we've been borrowing computer time from all over the planet. And paying the going rate for it and using it to camouflage the actual intrusions.

We have a sound theoretic balance for hyperdrive control down to, hm, benchmark about two point two, I'd reckon no more at present, and to save it for the run back.'

Lennart nodded. 'I was expecting about three, but that'll do. We'll need to fuel, that'll give her her first cue, and also some cover in terms of small craft going hither and yon- my neck on the block is what she wants. Iffy. Can you do it?'


Aleph-3 started to say something, but deferred to her team leader. Aleph- One made the call. 'One team- yes with losses. More, safer- Pasiq's not reported to be brilliant with zap and sabre, but she's lasted long enough to make me doubt the accuracy of that.

I'd prefer to hit her with enough bodies that she's looking too many ways at once to focus on any of us, gives us a much better chance of a clean kill and a live hostage.'

'Deniability?' Lennart asked, rhetorically.

'Would have to be accomplished through other means. Log data, sensor data, crime reports. Killing her is going to be our normal job but much more so- she's a veteran of years of crime and intrigue, she won't die easily. It should take a platoon- '

'Or a sniper.' Aleph- 3 said what her team leader had been hoping she wouldn't. 'One assassin, to make it look right. let's face it,' she said more conversationally to Lennart, 'it's the only way I'll ever get in your mother's good books. Although I would welcome the backup.'


Lennart took a deep breath, sighed, and agreed. 'Use something deniable.' he said. 'The support force-'

'Can we go?' Omega- One- Red-One asked, a little uncertainly.

'The hostage she tries to take, we expect her to try to take, is almost certainly going to be a blood relative of mine. Why would introducing a hyperatomic demolitions team to that situation be a good thing?' Lennart asked. 'What have you done?'

'Would this have something to do,' Rythanor asked OR11, 'with the eight equidistant camouflaged packages hidden in nicely inaccessible spots in the planetary wilderness, that you are responsible for?'

'As a prank, pretending to wire the planet for demolition is- it's extreme. Extremely what, well, "moronically dangerous" is the first thing that comes to mind. Lennart growled. 'These are completely inert, dummy packages?'


'Fireworks.' OR11 admitted.

'Planetary scale fireworks? At least one of them an exercise electroflare, throws out a cloud of wire that looks like a ramscoop grid, passes a charge through it, actually looks like the first flash of a petaton bomb?' Lennart demanded.

'We, um, thought we had to top the armoured cavalry.' the stormtrooper admitted. 'The first is just holographic but they, ah, escalate. They're all boobytrap puzzles, they've each got clues to the next, the flare is actually the seventh. The eighth just fires custard.'

'I think we've finally managed to come up with a prank that goes too far.' Mirannon said. 'The fighter wing?'

'On standby.' Lennart decided. 'Yes, you lot can go down to the planet- you need a chance to redeem yourselves. Any further screwups and I will be tempted to glue you to one of your own bombs.'


They did not want to ask, so Mirannon did it for them. 'Tempted?'

'We're in better state to be shot at by the Corellian Navy than I thought we were, but still not there yet. Something like that does come damned close to an act of war- for endangering your comrades like that,' he told OB11, 'seeing one of your pranks go off from the inside might be appropriate.

It would also be a credibly dark side thing to do, so you are very lucky I'm trying to resist temptation. Go and fix your mess. Aldrem?'

'Sir?'

'Look on the bright side- it's finally someone else's turn to go and do the shooting.'

[Simon_Jester]

...Did they just improvise an assassination/capture scheme for a Sith Inquisitor on the fly?

I think they just did.

[InsaneTD]

I dunno but this is the best Christmas gift I've gotten.

[Vianca]

I dunno but this is the best Christmas gift I've gotten.

And it ain´t the only one I´ve gotten either, just the first.

Remnant, don´t forget that they probably don´t have that anti-grav-well system yet.
You´d know, the one the Happens got during the Vong war (Agents of Chaos II: Jedi Eclipse), only to lose most of these equipt ships thanks to centerpoint firing.
I bet that Mirrannon would really like to lay his hands on one.

As for Force users, does the Black Prince have any Droideka´s?
The Empire capture several production places

[Crayz9000]

It wasn't the Hapans that came up with the HIMS (Hyperwave Inertial Momentum Sustainer), it was the Bakurans. Force knows why, they never really explained it well in the book.

The only way that the Bakuran tech managed to get them anywhere far in Centerpoint's interdiction field was that they daisy-chained a whole bunch of them together. It sort of wound up like riding a Orion rocket, only without the large shock-dampener plate installed.

[Vianca]

It wasn't the Hapans that came up with the HIMS (Hyperwave Inertial Momentum Sustainer), it was the Bakurans. Force knows why, they never really explained it well in the book.

The only way that the Bakuran tech managed to get them anywhere far in Centerpoint's interdiction field was that they daisy-chained a whole bunch of them together. It sort of wound up like riding a Orion rocket, only without the large shock-dampener plate installed.

The Happens got them from the Correlians.

ps: Here´s the link to the HIMS.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Direct continuation- next bit.




Pasiq was perfectly well aware she had been offered bait, and somewhere behind it was a hook and a line; but her contacts and her bought and forced agents were unable to determine exactly what.

The threads she had inside Corellian Engineering simply ranted about balloon animals and various unlikely and impossible procedures- for that group unlikely and impossible seemed to make a remarkable amount of sense.

The description did after all fit them, but in the last analysis it wasn't their own eccentricities that mattered as much as how they chose to back up their principal. She was sure they would.

What to do to him was so obvious that, if he had any sense at all, he could see it coming. Once she had chosen not to follow him into the hall of smoke and mirrors by attacking him legitimately and bureaucratically, what was left?


That would have taken a small eternity- getting him and the Starfleet to stand still for the verdict wouldn't be easy, either. attack him directly- there was surely a limit to the number of traps he could have that ship rigged with, wasn't there? It didn't feel that way.

Presumably- if her sense of danger was any indication- he had learned from Adannan, and established defences, killing zones, procedures that would make a direct confrontation suicidal- it would be her against half a billion tons of machinery and energy.

Wait for him to make a mistake? She had already spent too long here, and had arguably made more than he had. Lately, too, when she sat down before her computer it felt dangerous.

She couldn't quite parse that- there was danger in data, always, but this felt as if the computer might be trying to kill her.

Actually, it felt increasingly as if the law, supposedly on her side, was going to try to do that as well. They were not with her in any meaningful sense, and she could catch glimpses of why- Lennart had been telling them stories. Uncomfortably accurate ones by the look of it.


The morning delivered two rude shocks; on arriving at the officer, 'Where is my aide? She was summoned, and must attend.'

The office full of cops at open- plan desks turned to look at her, most of them glared, radiated as much hostility as they dared. Pasiq noticed that the lock had been shot off the office door- smelt the black tang in the air. She knew what they were going to say.

'Suicide attempt.' one of the section leaders said, tone making it clear he held her responsible. Probably correct, but that was only an operational problem.

'And you're all so disappointed that it wasn't murder.' Pasiq said, silk and ice. She was considering what to do- second another of them, get on with it herself- had deLante actually outlived her usefulness? There could be more to be wrung from her, Pasiq had not finished the business of using her to lay open her parents' vulnerabilities.


'Boss,' one of the agents at a large, three-monitor desk called to the section leader. 'Urgent from traffic control- what are the Imperials up to?'

'My chief liaison officer's in a padded cell, how the stang am I supposed to know?' the section leader shouted back. 'What does traffic control think they're doing?'

'Small craft and fighters everywhere, personnel recalls, and the ship's broadcasting engine danger space and military unit traffic warnings. Oh, coming in now- engine trials in the outer system.'

Pasiq had years of experience maintaining poise in front of things far more terrifying than a room full of police; Palpatine, for a start. She gave nothing away, but she was thinking that this could not be coincidence.

Lennart had made his move then, surprising- although in it's own way evidence of the dark side. Yes, that added up to a credible scenario.


If deLante wasn't wrong that he cared for her, but he, as was only appropriate for a licensed Imperial psychopath and natural born killer, was much closer to the dark side than he let on...

he let me break her for him; drive her to the edge, feed her obsession, step in and "save" her- and steal all my groundwork, Pasiq thought; she's not his, she's my chew toy.

He was of course prepared to use deLante as bait, have her taken into protective custody and at the same time appear to leave her unguarded, draw me out; he knows I have to move soon, and he's giving me a disgustingly obvious option.

The other prime possibility is his daughter's boyfriend. He's in jail- put there by Lennart in fact- and theoretically easily accessible to the forces of order, and me.

His biological family aren't serious candidates for hurting him. Not in the immediate manner I need. I actually find it easy to believe they inclined him towards the dark side- they kriff you up, your mum and dad- but not that they followed him.

They weren't massively important, but neither were they nobodies; if either of his parents had the energy of the dark side, it would be obvious. His siblings, probably more so.

In fact, wasn't one of them an actual, declared Rebel? Yes, kriffit- his sister. Whom he had done nothing to rescue or suppress, either way. He wouldn't react for them.


If he was close to any of them, it was his daughter, who was up on the ship with him and unreachable. So, his girl, in a psych ward under what they no doubt fondly imagined was heavy guard, or her boy, in a fairly open prison-

the physical security around each was from the point of view of a dark side Inquisitor essentially trivial; it was the information control that mattered, the warning that they would give in order for Lennart to get his ambush ready.

It's not going to be legitimate, he's advertising to the entire system that he's not in a position to do anything about this-it's going to have to be a private black op, conducted by someone form his crew he actually trusts.

In terms of getting at and holding hostage someone who could get the reaction out of him that I want- who could get him to think badly and expose himself- my actual best bet may be the assassin.


I see how his script plays out now; I attempt the kidnapping, and get caught in the act and vaped by his strike team that he's hidden somewhere in that swarm of small boats, oh dear mistaken identity, blue on blue, what a shame.

Or not; he's already over his annual politics dosage threshold with Adannan's death, the fallout from a second dark jedi dying in his vicinity would just be too much.

Paranoia check. Is that actually the plan? Is he known to the highest echelons- to Palpatine, in fact- and acting as a lightning rod? Conspirator bait for people like me? no- I can't see him fitting in there. No more than, hm, than Vader's agent Jixton.

What would serve me, she thought, is to get the assassin to make a false start, which I can probably best do by selling them a dummy- feinting towards one target then moving for the other.


If I go for the prison facility, on the ground, that should work for me but I don't expect it will, the shortest way is usually the most heavily boobytrapped.

A mental ward- where? 'Where was deLante taken?'

They wouldn't want to say, of course- she played the conversation forward in her head, thinking how it might go. You have to tell me, I'm an inquisitor, I have the authority and the power of life and death over you; oh yeah, who's going to enforce that, the Imperial ships in orbit?

She could take them herself of course, but the implications of that were far more dangerous than the act. Perhaps that would be right, backup could work both ways- execute them and then demand that Black Prince support her?

Unlikely. They would 'rescue' her, and she had conducted enough such missions to know that if the friendly fire didn't get her, the ascent would- even in the best case if she survived to be taken aboard their transport and then killed the crew and hijacked it, that would leave her with the prospect of a space fight against the Starfleet's best.


She could make the same demand of the computers, and they would be less likely to betray her. Plan.

Into the office then, enjoy the atmosphere of despair and hopelessness the suicide attempt had left behind, and yes, the computer felt like an enemy, but that made sense now- psychic residue.

DeLante had been transferred to an orbital facility- Low General, Western Stream- one of a string of platforms that shared the same west to east elliptical, inclined orbit.

Interesting place to put people who thought badly, the Inquisitor thought, in an incredibly dangerous environment where mistakes and poor thinking equalled death; that could be drastic situational therapy, or a much nastier mind than anyone suspected.

Everything that happens in space is visible, so does that serve me or him, now I think of it from that angle?


I should have done this on a completely covert basis from the beginning, not that I thought that would be wise then- and now I have to go on as I have begun, it would be too noticeable to change tack now.

He cannot afford to openly attack an officer of the Imperial state; as long as I have the shield of authority, I'm safe- from overt action, anyway. I could probably get away with boarding his ship as long as I took a news crew with me.

I wouldn't be safe from having to explain why afterwards, though- I can explain myself to a secret tribunal, but not to an open one. So I have to kill him in secret, and he can kill me in secret, which is back to square one.

Kidnap deLante from the platform, make sure they see me doing it, and head back to the planet with her. Too inconspicuous if I did it by public transport. Police shuttle, then.


Out to the main body of the office then, into the wall of hostility emanating from the police. Good, from both points of view. As far as her official master's wants went, spreading fear and hate was a desirable thing- it stress tested everyone, the powers got to see who could and who couldn't cope, who was and who wasn't worth their keep.

A few drops of bad blood sprinkled over CorSec may be beneficial, too- may at least provoke them into doing something that would justify the Empire hitting them with a bigger hammer.

As for her hidden master, who she had heard so little from- a worry- dissent among the arms of the law was good. Made her job momentarily more difficult, and she had long since ceased to ponder the fact that criminal and state objectives were often so neatly aligned, but getting results wasn't supposed to be easy.

'I need a shuttle, sign one out to me.' she demanded. They guessed why, bristled. Would have refused if they dared. She turned on the dispatcher. 'Two choices. Defiance or cooperation. Anything less than full cooperation will be punished as defiance.

Shuttle, fully fuelled, fully operational, with qualified pilot, full clearances and all bureaucracy taken care of. Now.'



There were advantages to having the dark side of the force. She beat down the dispatcher's will until he agreed and set it all up.

The first thing the section leader did as soon as she was far enough out of the room not to hear, was to call the Imperial ship now leaving to conduct engine trials.

Pasiq was actually genuinely unaware of it, but she rated it an effective certainty that they would pass a warning, perhaps she should revert to the prison target, or go back to his biological family in the first place.

Decided against it. Not sufficient certainty of the assassin bothering to turn out.


The assassin Pasiq was fencing with, otherwise known as Omega-17- blue- aleph-3, and the teams Blue-17 and Red-1, were following and monitoring the police shuttle, of course.

Who needs homing devices in controlled inner system space, with traffic control transponders abundant? They could track and outmanoeuvre her, as for energy control reasons the police shuttle would be making most of the trip on repulsors.

Pasiq could have ordered her pilot to move faster, of course, but she wanted this encounter, wanted them to know where she was going. An abandoned mental hospital would have been more fun, but an active one full of the troubled would do.


As soon as she realised where the target was going, Aleph-3 had an idea. She hadn't so much asked herself what her man would do as thought what the maddest outcome from this might be, then imagined the Captain telling her to do it. It did make sense, almost, after it's own looney lights.

'Cut your speed, give us a bit more time.' she called up to the pilot, 'I have a plan, but it depends on us all being in armour and looking official.'

Aleph-1 thought about it, decided professionally- and personally- he had to know. 'If you've come up with something completely off the wall to try to prove something to him-'

'There is a bit of the plan I'm relying on grace and luck to see us through, yes.' she admitted, half way through changing out of deniable civvies into her old familiar bodyglove.

'This plan?' Aleph- 1 asked.

'Poetic justice. I want to try to get her sectioned- she's obviously crazy; she believes she's a Sith Inquisitor, after all.' Aleph-3 smiled, hoping she could make it work, wondering if they might have to resort to flamethrowers.


Aleph-1 reacted coldly, professionally, and he was right. 'The first hole in the plan is what happens to us after she decides to prove that she is. If we get that far, hole two is what happens to the staff when they try to keep her. Hole three, and out, is what happens to those of us who survived hole one after she gets loose and reports.'

Aleph-3 thought about it for a second, half in and half out of her bodyglove and the men of the team trying not to look; realised what she had wanted to try wouldn't work, said 'Damn.'

'Wrong target to try getting that fancy with.' Aleph-1 pointed out. 'Why that plan?'

'I'm not all that sure of plan A.' she admitted. 'Crowded environment, close quarters, huge wild card factors- if I was her and was trying to lure us into an environment that would be perfect to fight and win in, this would be it.'

'Hm. Full ahead,' he called forward to the cockpit.


'Does the idea you've just had,' she asked, 'involve kidnapping deLante ourselves, first, and obliging Pasiq to follow us to a better kill zone?'

'I was thinking of one of Red's bombs, myself.' Aleph- 1 acknowledged.

[sropike]

This is rapidly turning into a stress test of cognitive processes.
Whos mind can cope with more twists?
Pure win, thank you for this supreme piece of reading!

[Vianca]

Atleast now we get to know what Trawn did that caused him to get a mapping mission.

But were would our crew end up?

[Simon_Jester]

This is rapidly turning into a stress test of cognitive processes.
Whos mind can cope with more twists?

To repurpose an old saying for dealing with the crew and marine detachment of Black Prince:

"Never argue with a maniac. They'll drag you down to their level and beat you on experience."

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Next bit- straight through again, and this does make it seem rather light and dark grey;


Decision made, the next part was obvious. Com-Scan had access to the network of the hospital, had followed deLante through the system. They knew which ward, which room, names and CV's of most of the staff- not that the team planned anything really that subtle.

They could stall Pasiq with data measures- crashing the platform's approach control systems would do for a start. Wouldn't normally stop a Corellian pilot, but on quasi- official business, procedure had to be followed.

Actually, it was closer to work to rule. Every flight and safety regulation enforced to the letter- passive non-cooperation. Pasiq could have seized the controls, but that would have ceased to be a police and become an inquisitorial mission- and she was a passable pilot, no more.


For Black Prince's assault boat, no such qualms. Hit with slight positive velocity, make the final deceleration on the shields; tractor-walk over to the hatch, lock on and board.

Hot and heavy, then, that was going to be the way; they had decided to do it as a military raid. Terrify and send running, and hopefully relatively few would actually get in the way.

Hospital security was designed to cope with a moderate range of threats. Drunk, drugged and aggressive patients, patients' friends, patients' enemies, patients' attorneys- there was a decent sized team on duty, they were well equipped with mostly non- lethal and non- escalatory weapons, and trained to control, suppress, minimise.

Facing a military raid armed with the full anti- jedi kit, flamethrowers, multicannon, riot guns, grenade launchers, and any personal specialties Blue-17 cared to bring along, that was out of their reach. They sensibly scattered as Beth-2 sent a ball of flame rolling along the ceiling and the front desk caught fire. Should keep the rest of the emergency services busy and out of the way, though.


Red-1, being demolitions, had a fairly exotic equipment list; they had already gone too far at least once, and were probably keeping to it this time, but the official version was bad enough.

Blob explosives that, when thrown at a target, oozed over it and tried to find a way inside the cracks; small doses were perfect for blowing the doors and hatchways open.

Electroblast explosives that used a tailored magnetic pulse coil to first launch a cloud of dust explosive, trap it and tease it into the shape of the field, then fire a surge of electromagnetic power through it, taking the term 'shaped charge' to an entirely new level; Red team C seemed to prefer gargoyle- faces of fire.

Line charges, cryobombs, implosives, precise temperature plasma bombs that could melt the light metal and astroplast walls without damaging the structural members, sonoluminescent explosives- actually, most of it wasn't general standard Imperial kit at all, it was just hobby material that they had managed to sneak on to the table of equipment.

Issue kit was usually variations on the concussion and protonic charges, but there was relatively little call for those; just as well.


Pushing through the hospital main body was simple enough; they got meaner once they hit the mental ward. Many of them were old school, ex Republic army, and the others had been trained by those who had.

They had all been carefully monitored, as far as possible, for deviation, for psychological quirks- remembering that the Kaminoans had considered them all as disposable product.

Psychiatry was largely a way to cheat a clone, a brother, out of their identity and life by asking them strange questions they couldn't understand and punishing them for it. If this bred a hatred of the profession, then that was how it was.

There were other reasons why the Kaminoan revolt had been so enthusiastically prosecuted- but the mental monitoring by the psychiatrists who never gave, only took away, was a measurable part of it.


Doctors and nurses and non- medical hospital staff, they were all right. Administrators, well, if they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, hard luck. Headshrinkers? Kriff them.

When they found her, deLante was no trouble at all- she was on so many tranquillisers and antipsychotics that it might be as well to keep her away from neutron sources, though, because she was practically sweating lithium.

They cut her free and slung her over one of the bombheads' shoulders without trouble, at least before taking into account that somewhere in their peculiar loadout there probably was a neutron source.

It wasn't as much a matter of fighting their way out as running, before anyone could be daft enough to sacrifice themselves trying to stop them. Spilling some blood to make Pasiq look bad was tolerable, but they weren't here to commit mass murder, it wasn't a PGO.

That was happening in the normal course of things anyhow. The patients were too easy- although there had been one who had a gun under his pillow; must have been ninety or more, but drew it and started shooting anyway.

'Look at it this way; we probably saved him from months of agonising and ultimately ineffectual terminal care.'


There was another, in a side room, who had security men of their own; fast on the draw but feebly armed, they managed to shoot Aleph-3 and 4, but it was the embarrassment more than anything else that caused her to stumble and fall-

Aleph-1 switched to full power and smeared them into explosively- butchered, boiling flesh splatter patterns, Aleph-2 kicked the room door open and threw in a grenade.

Who cares who they were? Rich and important enough to have competent guards, and if the trooper had said anything it would have been along the lines of hi there, we don't know who you are but your people shot at us, so fuck you. The frag said it for him.

'Status?' Aleph-1 demanded, reverting to clone type and thinking the formality would help.

There was a wide, hot patch over her left breast and lower ribs that stung like a bastard- the armour had stopped most of it but enough heat had soaked through to scorch, at least. 'Low degree burns, I think- I can fight, but my ego may not recover. Four?'


Aleph- four had been shot in the shoulder; another scar to chalk up- his left arm didn't seem to be working properly. He had a carbine anyway. 'Tracking that on the ego. We were overconfident.'

'Let's get out of here.' was the most sensible thing to do anyway. As they made their way to the docking port, they got word from the transport crew that Pasiq's police shuttle had aborted approach; was heading for Kor Vella.

Presumably for the State Prison- the bit about the correctional academy for hopeless space numpties was just Lennart's humour- and on a more or less straight line, using her authority to clear the traffic out of the way, with mixed success.

She had nobody to back her up, after all- didn't choose to put that to the test.


On board the YT-1930m, there were three people needing medical attention now. deLante would need professional help of some kind or other, although perhaps in a different hospital.

Aleph-3 had her torso armour off and her bodyglove peeled off to the waist, and was thinking; three years ago or so, I wouldn't have felt self- conscious about this at all. I have two dozen men staring at my- freshly scarred- right tit, and it would have seemed perfectly normal.

'Well?' she asked the medic, not really wanting to look down too closely.

'Looks a mess, but superficial. Your bodyglove and armour are kriffed though. This is primary damage,' the bruise at the centre, 'the burn around it is heat bleedthrough where the glove melted.'


'What did he shoot me with?' she asked, finding it easier to be interested in that than in how it actually looked and felt. She would later, but not now. Didn't want to think about melting ribs and seared lungs.

'Something that could have been a damned sight worse. Amped up concealed carry gun, if they make disintegrator holdout pistols it was one of them- the armour did what it was supposed to, but it's a homogenised blob. You could punch through it with a sharp stick.'

'If Pasiq swung that way, there might actually be some point to doing this topless.' Aleph-3 managed to make all two dozen of her teammates jump with that, and even though the helmets made it impossible to tell she could hear their eyelids clanging wide open.

'You are just practising for the confusion and madness this is likely to involve, right?' Aleph- one asked.

'...Maybe? I doubt we have a spare glove and breastplate.'


'Move your arm.' the medic told her. 'Rotate the shoulder joint through the full range of motion.'

She managed not to whimper doing it, although it was only by a narrow margin- the shock was wearing off and galactic spirit, that hurt. When I was a rookie, she thought, we used to do things like this to ourselves for fun- we mustn't have had nervous systems then.

'Exactly. As the skin is stretched and pulled by the muscle under it, it cracks and splits, and distracts-' well, at least he was tactful about it- 'definitely suboptimal for combat.'

'Practising for confusion and madness.' she came to the useful conclusion. 'I'll change into uniform, then- do the talky bit.'


'Actually, what's the plan for this one, is it going to be another smash and grab?' she asked, as she was doing that, anaesthetic paste smeared over the shiny, plastic looking part of her skin.

'If Pasiq's had the sense to com ahead, and she probably will, we won't be able to do anything else. It'll be blood from the start.' Aleph-1 decided. 'Worse places than jail to do it, there are fewer innocent bystanders there.'

'Do we get there before she does, and try to ambush her, or get there after and have to fight our way through prison guards and security as well as a sith inquisitor?'

'If we get there before her, we have to deal with the guards, and the version of that I'd actually prefer moves at the speed of bureaucracy which means she'll catch us up.'


'Hold on a moment- we might be luckier than that. I know he's on some kind of work release program that the captain arranged for him. Can we check to see if he's actually physically in the cells at the moment, or out on the program?' Aleph-3 suggested.

A good and a relevant question- and it turned out that he wasn't; he was on a placement, typing for his sins- doing community service data entry.

For a skilled computer archaeologist to be sent back to the utter beginnings like that was a real punishment and one they had probably intended, a humiliation. He probably deserved it.

Of the Imperials only Jorian had met him, and come away with a very low opinion of him- tried to hide it but it was obvious enough. What sort of idiot couldn't tell the difference between sending a message and sending a suicidal doom robot?


Actually, quite a lot of them at one point or another, at least when they had all bought make-a-droid kits to pass a long patrol cruise, but not quite that stupidly.

Rafaella, when asked about him, tended to blush and look the other way- it was obvious that she didn't see as much in him as she once thought she had.

How he had been changed by this, if he had learned anything at all, what the way ahead was for her- well, it would be necessary to find out, and skim down to the important part- oh good, nowhere terribly secure.

On one of the orbitals that held the overwhelming majority of the Corellian population, for the local council- sorting out the absolute botch they had made of their census; about twenty of them, a few guards, security mainly an armed populace and the more effective for that.


'Not a smash and grab, then, not through a million hot headed Corellians if we can help it. Let's hope it doesn't come to that on the way out- we do stand a chance of doing this on speed and blather.'

The orbital they were closing on had started life as a standard cylinder plan, maybe, but had proceeded to build outward from there, from the relatively low- tech base to using grav generators to make up for off centre loads, stripping out and building on the structure, until symmetry was barely more than a memory, with a few smooth curvs somewhere under the shambles.

Docking wasn't much of a problem- they readily accepted the excuse of 'Imperial military flight.'

There were security there to meet them though- for a million people, how many? Less than a thousand, which said a lot about their surveillance technology, their confidence in the citizens or the crime rate.

deLante got left behind on the transport, of course.


Two CorSec there to meet them, and they looked at the two twelve- man squads and their collection of exotic hardware and wondered if there was anything useful they could do at all.

'Good morning, officers, you have a team here on community restitution from the Kor Vella Correctional Facility and we need to borrow one of them.' Aleph-1 began.

The two police looked at each other. 'He must be very dangerous if you need all that.'

'No, he's actually quite pathetic.' Aleph-3 said. 'The other people who also want to talk to him are extremely dangerous, so if you could cooperate and help us get him and move on, so you don't get caught in the crossfire?'


They failed to believe her for a couple of seconds, which she should have expected because it was the truth, than which few things are less convincing. 'Who?'

For a moment they couldn't remember. 'Space Idiot- Plarch gelVaaru.'

'Is that an official title?'

'It was his charge sheet, more or less. He was handed over to CorSec because it was less painful than dropping the full weight of Imperial justice on him, but now all his other crimes are catching up with him he's probably safer in our hands after all.'


'So- authority?' the cop on the left asked.

'Inquisitor Pasiq.' Aleph-3 applied the sting, showing him the (hastily faked up) order. There certainly was a form for these things, but CorSec wouldn't know it, which was just as well. The troopers knew it well enough, the cops didn't.

'This is...this just can't be right. Pasiq's a psychopath.'

'Why do you think we brought the ironmongery?' Aleph-3 said. 'It might not be right, but it is official. Clock's ticking.'


Audacity paid off, and they sent for him, it was only a couple of minutes later that one of the police thought to ask- wouldn't have dared but Aleph-3 saw him thinking and wondered-

'So, if this Imperial investigator wants to talk to him, who are the other people?' the cop asked.

'Us. Well, mostly.' she decided to tell them what was something like the truth because they might need a quiescent police force later.

'But- you're arresting him on her authority?'

'As you correctly noticed, she's not a nice person, even by our standards.' Aleph-3 bluffed. 'It all gets horribly complicated from there- politics happen, and you're best left out of that.'


They brought him up to the docks, this was the first time that he and his, she still wasn't clear on the terminology, something-not-in-law Aleph-3, Severian, had met; he was instantly recognisable as the pasty, petulant one who rapidly faded into frightened rabbit mode.

I need to have a word with Rafaella about her choice of boyfriends, she decided. Problem is, who are the alternatives for the captain's daughter?

Pel Aldrem, now, he would have been good for her. A cheerfully well centred lunatic, confident enough in his own sense of right and wrong to cut spectacularly across the official version, unafraid of looking like a fool; or a renegade, or a traitor, or a psychopath, or a maniac- all of which he frequently did.

He was taken, though, as was- much to his own surprise apparently- Ielamathrum Brenn, so who? Mirannon was about to be taken, provided Zubaide Blei- Korberkk had the sense to let it happen naturally and not force it.

Given how much of the CMO's common sense was absorbed by the job, that wasn't a given, but he probably wouldn't even think of Rafaella, his and Lennart's friendship didn't work that way.


Mirannon and women in general was an odd subject, come to think of it- the only thing really stopping him from having a harem was the fact that he didn't seem to want or need one, which was almost a shame.

The sheer physical size and strength of the man, his brilliance as an engineer and scientist, as a leader and a practical joker- but then there was the other side, the nineteen, twenty hour days, the all absorbing foci, the total dedication of the man to his work.

In his own way he was as much of a reactor- powered lone wolf as the Captain was- which only made him more perversely attractive, dammit. Still, he and Rafaella would have virtually nothing in common.


The ugly thought occurred to Severian, and she tried to screen it out but it made too much sense, that what would be good for Rafaella as a rounded human being may actually be someone who was bad to her.

Someone she could do the essential thing of reacting against to find herself, someone she could gain strength and definition by opposing. She didn't need a good man, she needed an evil one.

Would that fall too far- far too far- under the heading of being cruel to be kind? Her father would see it that way, and to be honest she couldn't think of a suitable candidate within reach. Lennart's crew were frequently mad and dangerous, with a high proportion of crackpots and deviants, but few genuinely wrong in the head.

Mirhak- Ghulej was the closest to that, and that wouldn't have flown at all; the Rear- Admiral wouldn't let a little thing like another human being get in the way of...whatever it was that he was actually after, he was out of reach. Plarch was neither the good man Rafaella deserved or the bad man she could harden herself against, he was simply insufficient.


gelVaaru started to twitch and shiver when he saw the stormtroopers, saw the one in the uniform glaring at him; not much chance of fight, went to flight and started to run; Beth-2 shouted 'Clear', pointed on and dropped him with a stun bolt from a DC- 15.

He went down hard, and twitching. Done quickly and smoothly, police quite impressed, and another cooperative hostage that they didn't have to listen to rambling on about nonsense.

'Has he been much trouble?' Beth- 1 asked the prison guard escorting him, as they collected the unconscious hacker.

'I've been wanting to shoot him for days. Whiny, obnoxious, neurotic, complains when we treat him like the baby he is, complains when asked to do anything at all, complains when we don't baby him, I can see why you dumped him on us.'

'Actually, it was because we would have had to assess his offences as Category One- death without the option. He really didn't look like that much of a master criminal at the time.' Aleph- 3 said.


Bundle him on board, leaving confused and thinking CorSec behind, seal up and undock and head for bomb site seven.

Actually passing Pasiq on the way, fuming with anger- she hadn't been thinking widely enough to check ahead; had got to the front desk, and been told that her quarry wasn't there, eh was on work release.

There had followed a major failure of intimidation, as she had let anger get the better of her and raged at the admin staff, and they had not given in fast enough- lashing out had been a relief, but had got her nowhere.

She would undoubtedly be blamed- by Black Sun and the Empire- for the death in the hospital of Gleppa the Hutt, who was in Corellian space on a recruiting run, was there because someone had already tried to assassinate him, and who had been fragged to death by, apparently, her.

Forces acting under her direction, anyway, which would land her in even more trouble. She had been in a perfect mood to dish out some pain, and had- but it had got her no help, no cooperation, and nearly got her shot, law be damned; but she had teased out of the computers the current location of her prey.

Which was currently heading in the opposite direction at high speed, looking to have enough time in hand to set up a very nice little ambush.



----ed.in; yes- and not the first damnfool mistake of that nature I've made recently. This is starting to worry me.

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

I think you mean Kaminoans, instead of Geonosians, a couple of times there.

[jpdt19]

They better be sure they head for fake bomb site 7 not 8, unless all they want to fight with is custard

And yes, that line still cracks me up everytime.

Very nice chapter ECR

[Vianca]

Oops, seems somebody forgot to do her homework and that for somebody in that position...
Power corrupts?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Thank you; and yes, I did forget to put Kaminoan instead of Geonosian- corrected one example but not the other- or the third. Doing that now.

Pasiq is not thinking clearly. The paient with the bodyguards was a Hutt- whose death, conisdering the strike group, Blue-17 and Red-1, had faked documents claiming her authority, will be blamed on her. CorSec have a good idea that the strike team are faking it.

Pasiq's losing the plot. Unless the stromtroopers get overconfident- which nearly happened, Aleph-3 is still in denial about getting hit really, it hasn't sunk in yet- things may work.

One thing. Is she right about Plarch? If she has her way, he's going to end up tied to the bomb at this rate. It may be esentially a flare, but it's a damned big one.