Hull 721, plot arc the second

[Singular Quartet]

ISB, rebels, or having escaped on their own. So many possibilities, so much chaos. Or maybe all three happened at once? I wouldn't be surprised by that, and I imagine it will be hilarious.

[Vehrec]

Gunnery crew Port 4; either the unluckiest bunch of sods to ever have to explain what they did to their supperior officers, or the luckiest. It all depends on the day and the barrometric pressure. Whatever they do, wherever they go, they cause weirdness and bizzare things to happen around them. It's like some sore of curse.

[jpdt19]

Superb!
Excellent chapter. Hmmm yes, how to explain the huge stash of capital grade torpedos we have aboard, that we shouldn't be able to fire without extensive and 'unauthorised' modifications . An exec's work is never done!!


Oh and as to the gentleman who thought he'd got a christmas present, my appologies. For one, it came out very shortly anyway, and secondly, i incorrectly assumed a notification of a new post by email would also list who it was from, as happens at spacebattles. I was wrong, so sorry.

[Kartr_Kana]

Excellent chapter ECR and it's nice to see the gun team is back in the spot light even though that's the last place they want to be Can't wait for the next chapter!

[Thanas]

Well, that was a fun chapter. Though I am not sure if you got Thrawn's opinion of stormtroopers right - he takes great care of them in Tatooine's ghost, even secretly serving with them in order to improve their procedure.

[LadyTevar]

I did like them pointing out the mirror to Thrawn. That was far more amusing than anything else.

[Thanas]

^Yeah, I agree.

Another thing - as far as I know, Thrawn only used his core name in the galaxy proper. The rebels did not even know his true name until the stumbled upon the empire of the hand.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

The thing about the rear-, soon to be vice-, eventually grand admiral is, I don't actually like him as a personality. I get the same sort of vibe off the page about him as I do about someone like Manstein or Yamashita.

As a professional officer of high ability, admire, yes, but I find it impossible to summon up any real affection for him. Granted, being an amiable human being (or thereabouts) and a competent senior officer are very poorly correlated at best, but it would be utterly out of character for him to be caught placing a tub of cream over a barracks door, or indulging in a pillow fight with one of his seconds, as Cromwell did.

By the standards of the cold, ruthless men there are to compare him to- Vader, Tarkin, Palpatine- he is probably the most human; but those are very high standards of callousness. (Harssk, Isard, that rabble- not in the same league.)

I doubt he could have hid his full name from the Starfleet bureaucracy for very long; what would happen when someone senior orders him to tell them? Or from a wardroom full of curious equals, in that stage of his career.

Not as if he really has to hide it, there's hardly anyone in the Empire who would understand the full significance of Chiss names anyway. The career track I'm assuming he had would have largely kept him out of the public eye so it's no surprise the rebels didn't know, but his colleagues and rivals would.

If I ever noticed Tatooine Ghost in a shop, it was to think 'oh, god, burning over old ground again?' and ignore it- I had to look it up on Wookie. The more I think about it, the more silly it sounds, him deploying covertly with a stormtrooper team. Think of all the reasons why Chester W. Nimitz was not to be found hitting the beaches at Iwo Jima.

Mind you, three- four years after Endor, taking extra care of and over them makes sense- the old breed would have acquired significant rarity value by then. Disguising himself as one is just a bit too Arabian Nights, but taking a personal interest of a less direct kind is eminently sensible. (Doing that is indicative of a wild streak, that I'll give him.)

At this time, he's still not really broken out of the herd- there are other officers with records as good or better in 37 rS, some of those who eventually become grand admirals for a start, to say nothing of Convarrian, and Publius' High Admiral, subsequently Moff Powellyne- and is compelled to visibly share or at least sympathise with the common attitude of his peers. That and EC-1218 did just commit the offence of dumb insolence.

He did rely on the noghri rather than the legions for complicated dirty work, when he had the alternative. Also going back to an earlier point- the tractor beam officer he promoted for quick thinking- yes, but the poor sod who had the job before that was murdered, by a civilian member of the admiral's personal retinue, for a military mistake. So far outside the code of imlitary justice it's raising two fingers to the very concept.

Oh, on the subject of ship design; technologically inappropriate and the wrong universe, but http://www.tboverse.us/HPCAFORUM/phpBB3 ... f=11&t=429 I find fascinating- and funny. Stuart's work, retrieved from the archives.

[Thanas]

The thing about the rear-, soon to be vice-, eventually grand admiral is, I don't actually like him as a personality. I get the same sort of vibe off the page about him as I do about someone like Manstein or Yamashita.

As a professional officer of high ability, admire, yes, but I find it impossible to summon up any real affection for him. Granted, being an amiable human being (or thereabouts) and a competent senior officer are very poorly correlated at best, but it would be utterly out of character for him to be caught placing a tub of cream over a barracks door, or indulging in a pillow fight with one of his seconds, as Cromwell did.

Yeah, I would agree. Still, when talking to Car'Das and his band of thieves he seemed to go to great lengths for them - I would argue that he is very empathic towards his men and civilians when he allows himself to be. I wouldn't correlate him with Manstein, but rather with Hadrian or Trajan in that regard. Ruthless if need be, but empathic if they could. Note that Thrawn does everything out of the desire to protect the galaxy - unlike the others, who are primarily out for personal gain.

I doubt he could have hid his full name from the Starfleet bureaucracy for very long; what would happen when someone senior orders him to tell them? Or from a wardroom full of curious equals, in that stage of his career.

Considering that he only used Thrawn when Parck found him, there is no reason to assume they ever got his full name on record. Palpatine might have ordered him to name himself, but not even Thrawn's direct subordinates knew his full name. Even Mareek Stele, the most distinguished of the Emperor's hands, only heard him being called Thrawn.

Not as if he really has to hide it, there's hardly anyone in the Empire who would understand the full significance of Chiss names anyway. The career track I'm assuming he had would have largely kept him out of the public eye so it's no surprise the rebels didn't know, but his colleagues and rivals would.

By all indications, they do not.

If I ever noticed Tatooine Ghost in a shop, it was to think 'oh, god, burning over old ground again?' and ignore it- I had to look it up on Wookie. The more I think about it, the more silly it sounds, him deploying covertly with a stormtrooper team. Think of all the reasons why Chester W. Nimitz was not to be found hitting the beaches at Iwo Jima.

It looks more like he wanted to acquire the unique artwork Kilik's Twilight and to get a first-hand look at his men.

He did rely on the noghri rather than the legions for complicated dirty work, when he had the alternative. Also going back to an earlier point- the tractor beam officer he promoted for quick thinking- yes, but the poor sod who had the job before that was murdered, by a civilian member of the admiral's personal retinue, for a military mistake. So far outside the code of imlitary justice it's raising two fingers to the very concept.

That also happened to be a guy who lied about his training and then tried to pass the blame on to his innocent chief. And finally, flag ranks in the empire almost execute people at the drop of a hat outside the code of military justice - Tarkin, Vader, Isard etc...they all seem to be above the law.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Yes, scary prospect, isn't it? I have to admit that I do see a natural source of tension there, between the political and professional authority- one that the professional doesn't often win. That implies some fairly ugly things about how the Starfleet functions- about the extent of political interference in operations, for a start. Something I want to speak to in the later course of the story. Anyway,


Hull 721 arc 2 ch 5

The triple landing feet sank half a metre into the lawn, as the repulsors shut down and Epsilon squadron came to rest on what would be their new home for the next eighty days.

The fighter field was legally Imperial territory proper, leased from the Diktat to put up Imperial units while the ship they were basing out of was under refit in a Corellian yard. So, in theory, it should have been fit for purpose.

Unfortunately, it had been laid out with the secondary purpose of impressing the freewheeling natives with Imperial order, discipline and regularity. It was designed to hold the standard fighter wing of a standard line destroyer, not a TIE fighter more, not a TIE fighter less.

Hardpads and landing cradles in precise rows, exactly the mandated distance apart. The type of support bunker described in the manual, placed precisely where it was supposed to be.

That was all well and good, for a standard wing, on a standard line destroyer. Black Prince was neither of those things, and had refused to take ‘sorry, you can’t land, we’re anal-retentive’ as an answer; the controllers had looked on in horror as the heavy fighters kept coming, overflowing the pads, spilling out into the speeder park and the landscaping.


It would have been more sensible to stick them into a cruiser’s support hardstanding, but they were standing on their dignity instead, and sense was a quality they seemed to be lacking.

The TIEs got priority on the racks. Their fragility was grossly overestimated by most rebel sources, but their shape did make them a real chore to maintain, and an athletic feat to mount and dismount from, without the proper stand.

Not particularly easy with it, for that matter. The shuttles and transports were rough field capable, they were planted in an impromptu perimeter- they had defensive turrets, could be kept ticking over on the ground to defend the wing if need be.

The Starwings, with their shuttle ancestry and fixed guns, weren’t needed on the outer perimeter and were capable of managing anywhere they could physically fit, which was why so many landscape gardeners were now having screaming fits.

Divots in the lawns, flowerbeds trampled underfoot, a rockery that had been transformed into a bombery, and one of Mu squadron who had suffered an approach systems failure and splash-landed in the rec centre’s swimming pool.


As befitted a squadron leader, Franjia Rahandravell had her pick of the available spots, and had sensibly chosen an area of flat level grass near to an accessway, tuning out Imperial and Corellian flight controllers screaming at her and each other.

Wait until the heavy fighter had settled onto a firm footing- which meant the base layer of gravel, ground pressure being a real problem for the big fighter, especially with the weight of her bird’s turbolasers.

Once secure, shut down the repulsors, talk Three out of using his lasers to remove an inconvenient wall, then engines cool, shields and tensors off, reactor cycle down to cold.

She took her helmet off, pushed out of her seat, sat on the lip of the cockpit for a moment smelling the planet, looking at what would have been a contemplative garden before Four had parked a Starwing in the middle of it, rather spoiling the metaphor of penetrating layers of disruption to reach inner peace.

They were all, to some degree, under suspicion; even- especially- those who had done no more than their duty. She had done a good deal more than that, and if there was a way of escaping the consequences she didn’t see it.

She had been visibly, unquestionably responsible for shooting down the private yacht of a special assistant to the privy council, without even the captain’s orders, without any sanction other than her own instincts and a grudge really.

Even if he turned out to be as dirty as a space trucker’s underpants, they still had a case against her.


Looking down, her eye rested on the panel adhered just below the cockpit rim, her mark, the name and score sheet carried from fighter to fighter.

They had credited her with the kills scored from the cockpit of the Y-wing she had flown briefly while pretending to be an Alliance agent, and going over the gun camera footage from the battle of Ord Corban had brought her score up to seventy.

You go, girl, she thought sourly and satirically, looking down at the panel. Is this what I imagined life would be like? At fifteen, I thought I’d be married with three kids by now, she thought. What is there on that side of the score sheet?

Two teenage romances, one of them barely counts because neither of us knew what we were doing. A cadet fling that was going nowhere and we both knew it.

An affair with a colleague in the police that was hollow before it began, we got to spend half a day together every ten days, shift patterns never matched up. Never able to be there for each other.

One from the other side of the law, although nothing had ever been proven. A deceiver and a charmer, brilliant in bed but never, ever there; he had built an entire career around not being there when people came looking for him, and when she needed him, needed somebody, he had assumed it was a trick and stayed away. Damn him.

Then there had been Ezirrn Tellick, which had ended badly too- even before then, they had hit a plateau. Nowhere further to go, except the big leap- which would have prevented them from serving together.


For every man I’ve screwed, she put it deliberately crudely, I’ve kicked at least another dozen into the netherworld. At least that many, considering multicrew fighters, my share of the torpedoes and missiles fired at larger craft.

What a spectacular record as a human being, she berated herself. The angel of death made flesh. Was it worth it? If they’re going to string me up as a result of trying to murder that bastard, I have more than enough real crimes to answer for anyway.

Tomorrow I might manage to convince myself again, she grumbled. Duty, a risk of a life against a risk of a life, them or me, all that jazz. The bits I’m supposed to believe in, rather than what anybody actually does.

Then she caught sight of a short wide man in a flight suit wandering across the landscaping in her direction. Gamma One, otherwise known as Aron Jandras.

She was so absolutely sure that he was about to say something dangerously stupid that she mentally prepared to shoot him- for half a second, before she sickened of the idea.

He was not that perceptive, socially- an understatement- but he did have enough sense to see she was in a foul mood. As well as his not being quick-witted enough to work out why, He said ‘If you want to talk about it…’

She started to snap at him, then realised she very much did want to talk about it. ‘I’ll bring the squadron, we could do with a purge.’ Haul her kitbag out of the stores pod- where was his?- and start walking, head for the base buildings and get some kind of transport to the nearest conurb.


The base facilities were liable to overflow, they couldn’t hold all the pilots and personnel. She had been expecting to be restricted pending inquiry, but had been told she could use the ship’s petty cash fund to take civilian quarters while they were there.
Was that a hint- fairly massive one, at that?

In theory, it was somewhere between a standing policy and an oversight. One of the very few occasions being a female officer in the Imperial Starfleet had some upside.

Usually, on most ships, they were packed in with everyone else and told to like it or lump it; a crude, give them what they want until they choke on it kind of equality.

On some ships, with some crews, that could have been disastrous, and was in some misogynistic minds probably intended to be. On a well run ship, it tended to have the opposite effect- they became part of the family. She had never really been a joiner, although she could fake it well enough.

One thing about that policy was that female officers got first pick of the off-site accommodation that was available. We’ll probably end up burning the place down, Franjia thought gloomily.


‘Where’s your kit?’ she asked Aron.

The smartarse comment- we’ve got a long way to go before you start doing my ironing- occurred to him, but she was too far down for that, and while she half expected him to be an irresponsible prat, events had got to him too.

Post-ironic mock sexism isn’t all that funny, he thought, that and she’ll probably shoot me. ‘Got my orderly to drop it off in bachelor quarters.’ He said, factually. ‘You didn’t think of that?’

‘No.’ she said, vaguely surprised. Thought about it, decided ‘I just don’t feel comfortable, thinking in terms of having minions.’ She admitted. ‘Especially not after-‘

‘Oh, yes. Point.’ Aron realised. Wasn’t that part of the point of working for the Empire, though- part of the point of there being an empire in the first place?


As long as there were names and numbers, and by implication the nameless and numberless like him; as long as the great old game of master and servant, power and authority was still played, which would be as long as there was life in the galaxy, then- why accept being on the losing side?

Why not strive for power, and once you had it try to enjoy it?

Unlike their commanding officer, Aron was no political theorist, just an ex street kid, and he understood the concepts of power down in his gut. So did so many of the higher echelons of the New Order.

Franjia, at the moment, was labouring under the effects of an overinflated conscience. She had killed a dangerous scumbag- or at least tried to- and she was feeling guilty about it? That made no sense.

Well, murdering a gang-boss was never a smart move. Attacking upwards was never smart, period. Take out someone with a greater social standing and you rocked the boat. Opened the way for turf wars, precedence wars, lethal pushing for position- it had been a dumb move.

She had been personally threatened, but that was nothing. People got threatened. Fact of life. She should have known better- probably had, he thought, but had been pushed into a corner. Partly by him.

Kriffit. If anybody was supposed to be on her side, it was him, and she needed cheering up.


Not that that was likely to happen, considering who was making their way across the grass towards them. A civilian, dressed like a rich core worlder, with a retinue and an official escort of sorts.

‘Oh, dreck.’ Franjia groaned.

‘Trouble?’ Aron asked her.

‘That’s Lyria Tellick.’ She said. Aron looked blank, who? The name was vaguely familiar but so much had happened- oh, his predecessor as commander Epsilon squadron, the one Franjia had been sleeping with. This must be Tellick’s wife, no, she looked older than that, probably his mother.

As she came within face reading range his thought was ‘too fragile to cope.’. Hard but brittle, too much makeup, stern but sunken as if the mask was still there but the person behind it had started to fade away. Vindictive, liable to lash out? Possibly.

Franjia knew what Ezirrn had told her about his mother; she was a genuine, bona fide aristo, at least cyan blooded although not rising to the same heights as the Tarkins or the Tagges or any of the great Names and Numbers. Hereditary rulers of somewhere or other, enthusiastic New Orderites largely in self defence.

He had felt the family ties less strongly, was much less likely to inherit- had never really expected that to happen to him, to come into power. Unfortunately, he had been right.

She was used to getting her way, used to being able to enforce her will- but not against the simple, brutal chances of war that had robbed her of her son. She didn’t understand.

‘Lady Tellick, you-‘ Franjia began, about to say that she shouldn’t be here.

‘I had to come. Nothing else is as important to me as my son. I, has there?’ Meaning to ask about a funeral, about how he had died, if there was anything wealth and power could do, if there was any faint, tiny chance that the reports were wrong.

Franjia was far from sure what she wanted to say to this woman, whom she had never really gelled with- never understood her. Only barely had a working grasp of her son.


Ezirrn Tellick had not been instantly popular on board Black Prince; he had been a son of wealth and a careerist, and evidently no-one had told him that fleet destroyer work was not the job for a rich boy.

It was dangerous, and it was slow work climbing up the ladder- two factors that normally did not go together, but regional force work was often like that, the mobile forces draining away talent from the rest of the fleet and concentrating it.

If he had wanted to rise in the ranks, he would have been far better off in a sector fleet somewhere, more open to nepotism, less exposed to the fire of the enemy and more open to rising on the basis of performance reviews than after action reports.

He had been something of a loner and a misfit, openly admitted that he was rich and promotion hungry which he was lucky hadn’t got him fragged. He had only gradually begun to break through the ice, and that had been what brought them together; their sense of being the odd one out.

Actually, as he had begun to find his feet with the squadron and the ship, he had reacted very much against his upbringing. She had watched the process of self indoctrination; I’m here now, might as well make the best of it turned into I’m supposed to be better than this shower, anything they can do I can do.

That turned into I’m one of these lunatics now, I have to take on some local colour, and degenerated into convincing himself to buy into their prejudices, their loves and hates- one of them was a set of strong anti-aristocratic and anti-republican prejudices that seemed to filter down from the top.

Franjia was never quite sure how deep the protective colouring had reached- whether he was just putting on a mask, or whether he was genuinely breaking the ties.

Pointless if not insulting, telling that sort of thing to his mother, even if she was sure his own take towards the end would have been ‘Civilians? Kriff ’em. What do they know?’


Lyria Tellick instantly resented Aron, this man she found hanging on her son’s girlfriend, and Aron would have needed to take a couple of seconds out to work out why but instinctively bristled back.

She noticed, and her personal bodyguard noticed. The aft turret on one of the positioned escort shuttles noticed too, swinging round to track on to the group.

In theory, that was an insult- but it was also up to six half- megaton bolts per second aimed at her left nostril. Indignancy was one thing, but if she thought Jorian Lennart was about to let any random civilian start behaving threateningly towards one of his people, she was wrong.

She collected herself, took a deep breath- fought down an impulse to have them flayed for disrespect- and managed to ask ‘How did my son die?’

Aron glanced at Franjia- he knew the bulk of the story, but not the details, wondered how much of it she wanted to talk about. Did she respect her lover’s mother enough to give the full unvarnished truth, or would respect constitute hiding that and trotting out the accepted official version?

‘The captain didn’t tell you?’ she stalled for time, tired and frustrated and frightened enough by the situation just to blurt it out, but she was struggling to retain some self control.

‘He tried to spare my feelings.’ Lyria Tellick said, implying that Jorian Lennart thought of her as a weak and feeble woman, and boy, did he have a surprise coming to him.

So she’s kidding herself about how well she’s handling it, Aron thought- uninvolved, really, able to look open-eyed at this. She thinks she can be strong about this, she’s wrong.


It was a strange place to be talking about the death, on a grassy slope on a far flung world. Franjia took a deep breath and started out ‘We were sent to assist a ship trapped in a rebel minefield, it was an ambush, the rebs were good. Have to give them that.

We moved in to destroy the mines and tow the Emerald Eel clear, she was the ship in the minefield, Verberor class- a strike cruiser- well, Black Prince was reeling her in when the mon cal arrived.

The two ships started pounding on each other, and we were loaded for antiship, so we were sent on a loop trajectory to hit the Mon Evarra- that was the reb- from the disengaged side.

The rebs were trying the same thing, it turned into a head on pass. X’s and Y’s. We won the first squirt- the opening exchange of fire- and they started lobbing their antiship rounds at us to give themselves room to run.

A rebel torpedo hit your son, Lady Lyria; hit the cockpit, it was either past it’s dates or just incorrectly set, it didn’t detonate- but the ejector seat tried to throw him out through the wreckage and he left his legs behind.’

Franjia said that deadpan, and it took the aristocrat a couple of seconds to parse that into something her brain could understand. The reaction was interesting, outwardly little but the mask of status, already prominent, lost all softening detail as the truth sank in.

Her son, her youngest, had died from a mixture of shock, exposure to vacuum, blood loss and trauma from dismemberment. Not instant, and not painless, not by a long shot.


‘Was there anything else that could have been done?’ She said in flat, desperately thinly controlled voice, hoping vainly and retroactively for some kind of rescue. Some kind of lightening of the burden.

Franjia shrugged. ‘We tend to shoot for Alliance squadron leaders and better- if we can catch them- they do the same to us. It’s a dangerous job, not many do it as well as he did.’ She threw lady Lyria a fragment of comfort, out of sheer social reflex.

‘Thank you.’ Lyria acknowledged.

‘I can testify to that.’ Aron backed her up. ‘I took over from SqLdr Tellick, and I inherited an outfit in good shape.’ He glossed over the memory of tidying up after the wake.

‘Did you avenge my son?’ she asked.

How to answer that? Not in person- although the Y-wings from the Mon Evarra had been part of the rebel fighter swarm, had been part of the flank move Delta and Epsilon had hit head on and savaged over Ord Corban itself. Their parent ship had certainly died, under the guns of Fist, Voracious and Dynamic.

‘The unit, and the ship it was based off, were destroyed.’ Franjia said. ‘In the chaos of a major battle, impossible to say exactly who- snowflakes in a blizzard, impossible to pick out individuals.’ She lied, and got a dirty look from Aron who was wondering what she was on about- before he figured it out.


‘I arrived after your son,’ Aron backed her up, ‘but I was there for that battle. Some of their X and A types may have made it out, their fastest and lightest, but none of the Y wings. None of the bombers.’

‘Who are you?’ she said, turning to Aron, trying not to shower bile over him in a way that made it obvious. He was alive while her son was dead. He had stolen her son’s woman.

‘Gamma One.’ Aron said, calmly. No nametag.

‘One of my many resident lunatics.’ A familiar voice said, from behind Lyria Tellick; Captain of the Line Lennart.

He had, to all intents and purposes, been wandering the streets for most of the day. The trousers of a dress uniform aren’t very distinctive, they could pass for drab and unfashionable. Fold up the jacket with the rank squares hidden, pocket the cap and he could pass for middle management out to lunch.

Exactly what he had chosen to do, after leaving the police station. Ramble through the streets, digesting the situation as he went. In theory that could be considered cowardice, but in practise he was the main point of failure at the moment.

Gethrim Mirannon, Obral Wathavrah and Ielamathrum Brenn between them should be able to cope with a probing Admiral, although hopefully not by resorting to extreme measures.


He had made a few plans and had a few thoughts, then decided it was time to get back to work. Starting by chewing out the staff of the temporary assignment field had been cathartic and probably useful, but then he had gone to sort out two of his biggest problems.

‘I need to talk to you- to all of you. Come with me.’ He didn’t wait for an answer, he and his aide and trooper escort turned and led the way to a small rented ducted fan hoverbus.

‘You’ll have to compromise on your retinue, Lady Lyria.’ He said, meaning leave most of them behind, as the bus filled up with stormtroopers.

‘Impossible.’ She said haughtily. ‘They wouldn’t know what to do without me.’

‘Then let them learn.’ Lennart suggested offhand, climbing into the driver’s seat- the stormtroopers moving to leave room for the Lady, moving round behind her to herd her into the bus.

‘Captain… I’ve heard the stories about what happened last time you did this.’ Aron said, warily.

‘I was there, we didn’t do all that badly.’ Franjia pointed out.

‘Yes, and I had to have you tied down afterwards so the medics could get at you and the briefcase brigade couldn’t.’ Lennart explained. ‘In fact it was lucky you blotted your record when you did, it made it easier to take you into protective custody.’

Franjia nearly exploded at that. ‘Protective? I was-‘ then she remembered who she was about to start ranting to.

Lennart didn’t object; preferred it in fact, vastly better than the alternative. ‘You felt helpless, exposed, maybe even wondered if I was staking you out as bait?’ he asked her.

‘Yes.’ She said.

‘Physical security against someone like him was pointless. Looking unreliable, unsuitable, like a frothing idiot, that was more likely to keep you safe from him than walls. Now, we have a different problem.’ Lennart stated.


Warm up the van, and prepare to lift off- but there was a rush of people towards it, most of them carrying things, and a surge of flashes that kicked in the antidazzle. When the hoverbus windows adjusted and they could see again, they were surrounded by journalists.

‘Tomas Veitch, Defence News Service. The revolutionary new heavy fighter-‘

‘Linder Bertalan, Corellian Courier. What some are already calling the ‘exterior decoration’ incident-‘

‘Illig Zyzmuk, Midrim Media Inc. the trend in terrorist activity-‘

A blare and a blur of flashlights and babble as the journos piled after the aristo and the uniforms.

Crap, they all thought, this is exactly what we need. Lennart turned it over in his mind, nothing particular to say that wouldn’t get him into trouble. It varied from place to place, sector to sector- but the media were the most effective brainwashing tool in the Empire’s armoury.

Tarkin, that never to be sufficiently damned idiot, had been dead wrong as usual. Fear, even when it was effective at keeping people in line, was never efficient. Bullshit through state controlled media was a much better alternative.

Even if the con trick did occasionally take even the perpetrators in, and they actually started believing their job was to be objective and impartial recorders of events. Worse yet, paparazzi.


He opened the window flap, one of them bounded up and tried to stick a microphone in his face. Lennart looked past him. ‘Mister….Bertalan, wasn’t it? How would you like a headline?’ he said to the native corellian journo.

The man could hardly conceal his eagerness, and the man now trying to climb in the bus seemed oblivious to the four E-11s pointed at his arm. Lennart looked down at what the intrusive idiot was standing on, and added ‘How about “Starfleet officer loses temper, feeds overeager journo into turbine blades?” ’

He closed the window flap- the arm drew back before it could be broken off- and hit the Environment Systems Purge button on the engine control sidestick.

Power cells diverted a little energy, and the lifesystem a lot of water, and blew the lift and drive fans clear of blockage and contamination with a surge of medium heat, high volume steam. Some of the journalists were smart enough to see it coming, most of them weren’t.

‘Right, off we go.’ Lennart said, bringing the fans up to speed and lifting the bus. It was very old school technology, and still popular for that reason; it was essentially mechanical. An average punter could do their own repair and maintenance, handcraft parts if necessary. No service and support required.

For any young anarchist, it was an essential lifestyle item, and Jorian Lennart had been no exception. It was a kind of independence- especially for those too broke to buy contragrav modules and computer controls. It was also bouncy and noisy, and Lennart found himself looking back and thinking; kriff, I was an idiot then.

Off and away at low altitude, find a convenient rooftop- didn’t particularly matter whose- ‘Right, bug check.’ The stormtroopers got out and scanned the craft for anything the journalists might have managed to attach- found two trackers and a listening device, threw them away.

Place a quick com call- ‘Qag? Yes, journos everywhere- worse than we thought. Drop’em.’ Back in, and off again.

‘Exactly who was the instruction to ‘drop’em’ intended for? Lyria asked, haughtily.

‘Relax, your staff are at no risk- ground force command. The dropships are going to come down loaded-I’ll sit a regiment on top of the wing, use them as security.’ Lennart said, the last to Franjia and Aron.

‘Where are we going?’ Aron asked.

‘Kor Vella, this thing’s transonic, should be there in no time.’ Lennart said. It didn’t have the agility and speed of response of a repulsorcraft, but it had much more in the way of grunt clawing it’s way through the air on brute electromagnetics, not faffing around with the feeble force of gravity.

‘In the meantime, we have a nice clean bus, should be hard for anyone to overhear us in.’ Lennart paused to let that sink in, then added ‘Lady Lyria, would you like to know what some friends of acquaintances of contacts of mine in the Ubiqtorate think of you?’

‘Outrageous.’ She said shaking herself back into some kind of alertness. ‘I give my flesh and blood to the Empire’s wars and their reward, their response is suspicion.’

‘Interesting you should leap to that conclusion.’ Lennart skewered her. ‘Your planet and it’s dependents feel a strong loyalty to your bloodline; where your head goes, they go too. That makes you and your opinions of interest to the Imperial state.’ Lennart said, bluntly and accurately.

‘War martyr son or not, they reckon you have an intellectual sympathy for the grand old days of the republic. And just a hint of ties to the Chandrilian wing of the Alliance.’

She took that badly, not that he was expecting anything else. ‘Nonsense. Incredible that an organisation supposed to be professional should be so incredibly misguided.’

‘Really?’ Lennart drawled, deadpan. ‘I find it very easy to believe that someone in your position might prefer the lazy, dozy, genially corrupt republic development agency to the coldly energetic, efficient corruption of the new order.’

She didn’t even pick up on that. ‘I’m a card carrying party member, a charter member- how dare you? How dare they. Do you really believe that I sent Ezirrn to be the champion of a cause I wanted to see fail, that I set my own flesh and blood up to be murdered by my friends?’


Twenty-five years ago, Lennart thought, I would have said something like “Of course I believe it; you’re an aristo, that sort of sick craziness seems to be perfectly normal for you.” And meant it, too.

‘No,’ he actually said, ‘I reckon you looked at the casualty tables and let yourselves believe that he would be one of the lucky ones; that power and privilege and the blue blood superiority supposed to underlie them would keep him safe in the cockpit, as they had already done the rest of his life.

He may have been minded to take the risk, didn’t believe he could die like a commoner, but however much you may regret letting him…Squadron Leader Rahandravell, what was Squadron Leader Tellick’s score in the end?’

‘Including the two he never lived long enough to put up?’ she asked, helping drive the knife in because she thought that was what was expected of her. Taking her Captain’s side in this- spacer against civilian? Youth against age?

Partly because she knew from the dead man that Lennart’s, and the Ubiqtorate’s suspicions were close to the truth. Perhaps Lady Lyria was just biased that way, hadn’t actually done anything, but Ezirrn had said, one drunk night, that he had been sent to serve as his mother’s alibi. Had said a lot, mostly incoherent.

‘Twenty-two fighters, fifteen mines and gunsats, six hovertanks, two light freighters; shares in three corvettes, two Nebulon-B lower scale frigates, one Quasar Fire baby carrier, one MC-40 frigate.’ Franjia reeled off the list.

‘Not bad at all.’ Lennart said. ‘Few do so well.’

‘You were his…’ Lyria started to say to Franjia, but couldn’t quite get the word “lover” out. ‘You know that there was more to him than a list of victims; he was a fine young man, a nobleman and a gentleman.’

Aron had to make an effort to stop laughing. As a description of a fighter pilot- of any successful fighter pilot- it was hilariously inappropriate. In retrospect, in memoriam, it was the sort of pious hooey that at least had tradition on it’s side- but then he remembered that this was in retrospect, and in memoriam. Even so.

‘He changed a great deal.’ Franjia cautioned. ‘Very little room for gentility in a cockpit.’


‘Never met him myself, but anyone who bets their life that often has to be fundamentally nuts.’ Aron pointed out, without a trace of irony. ‘Anyone who bets their life against someone else, wins, and goes back to do it again and again has to be a bit of a bastard.’

‘So what’s your excuse?’ Franjia asked him, tongue in cheek.

‘What excuse? I’m appropriate for my environment- I just happen to be from somewhere where being fundamentally nuts and a bit of a bastard were actually survival traits. Does that apply to the aristocracy too?’ he asked, in the translucent tone of an honest question, which convinced nobody.

‘You may not believe it, but there is such a thing as going too far.’ Lennart cautioned him. Despite reckoning that he had a point.

Aron grumbled something about being trained to drop energised protons on people but not being allowed to write ’kriff’ on the nose of his spaceplane, which nobody bothered to come back to.

‘Bombers are different, they’re the hunted, we’re the hunters- well, Starwings are actually a bit of both.’ Franjia said.

‘Which means,’ Lennart pointed out, ‘if I follow your argument, you’re not through-and-through, you’re actually schizoid with only a layer of criminally insane. Also the better a pilot is, the crazier they’re liable to be. Is this what passes for critical self-knowledge down in the bays? Not that the fleet would say that you were wrong.’

Lyria hardly knew what to say about that. Lennart added ‘The job changes you. Vocation, really. It settles into your soul- you have to be extraordinarily thick skinned for it not to make a difference. Your son changed- in some ways you would approve of, some not. Quicker witted and quicker-tongued, pricklier. Less tolerant. More combative.’


Franjia nodded, then said ‘Sir, coming back to that- did you have me down for off site accommodation so I could desert more easily?’

‘Good thought.’ Lennart said, after parsing through and thinking, ah, self-knowledge. ‘No, it was an honest mistake in the writers’ office, that I decided to let stand in the interests of deniability if it does come to that.’

Mindful of the squad of straight-arrow stormtroopers in the back of the van, he went on ‘You’ve done various other dubious things along the way- sit back, sometime, and think about how you’ve changed- and being out of sight and out of mind could, shall we say, prevent the truth getting sidetracked.

It all depends on the inquiry, if the investigating officer decides there are grounds for court martial, even then we’re in with a chance as all I have to do is convince the court that he needed killing.’ Lyria tried not to give away how much that statement intrigued her.

‘In the worst case,’ Lennart said to Franjia, ‘you at least have the mitigating factor of a successful trial in combat of the PulsarWing, that gets you points that might get you out, at least it’d buy you time. There are other people with fewer fallback positions.’ He added, thinking of Pel Aldrem.

‘You know, Lady Lyria,’ he said to her, ‘I was hoping that it would turn out that you were affiliated with the Rebellion. It could have turned out to be remarkably useful, either way.’

‘The whole supposition is inherently offensive- I am not going to grub around after a band of murderous anarchists, least of all those who deprived me of my youngest son.’ Lyria said, but the stormtroopers’ helmet sensors picked up the stress in the voice, the skin response and heart rate, and on the basis of that evidence she was lying.

‘By most of the fleet’s standards,’ Aron said, thinking that he was helping, ‘we are a bunch of murderous anarchists.’

‘Remind me never to ask you to take the stand.’ Lennart said, dryly.

‘What do you…oh.’ Aron realised.

‘You see what I have to work with?’ Lennart said to Lady Lyria, adding ‘Now if you were a, call it an associate, of the Alliance, there couldn’t possibly be a better time to throw yourself on the mercy of the Imperial state in a grand gesture of renunciation.’


Long pause. Lennart nosed the bus down heading for the nearest habitation, slowed and landed in a cloud of dust. ‘Right, everybody out. I presume you know how to drive one of these things? It isn’t that hard.’ He added to Lyria. ‘Think about it. Not going to be a better time to come in from the cold.’

‘What do you plan to do?’ She asked him.

‘Leave you with the bus, for a start. Civilisation’s thataway.’ He pointed vaguely at the south-western horizon. There was a sonic sizzle- the sound of a heavy ion drive craft using a force field bubble to slip through the air; it sounded like thunder and lightning from far off, and in fact heralded an assault shuttle.

Big, square-set thing, ridiculously well armed for a small craft, short barrel full calibre LTL, armoured and shielded too. ‘You may want to wait until the air clears.’ Lennart said to Lyria, and to his own people ‘Right, get aboard.’

Aron, Franjia, and the stormtrooper squad followed him up the boarding ramp; the spacetrooper bays were mostly empty probably wouldn’t be needed for this one- but there were two squads of them just in case. The rest of a platoon of boarding-batallion stormtroopers including 17-Blue.

‘Bug in place?’ he asked the leader of the escort squad, after the ramp had slid shut.

‘Of course, Captain.’

‘Captain, what are we doing?’ Franjia asked him.

‘Apart from waiting for Lyria Tellick to incriminate herself?’ Lennart said, hoping that she would- there was something else he could do with a spot of help from the wrong side of the lines for. ‘I have a few more lost souls to round up. A stray gun team, for a start.’

[LadyTevar]

Ooo... politics.

[Darth Raptor]

Since I'm the one who wouldn't stop whining about it, I should be the one to tell you your formatting has improved dramatically and no longer hurts my brain to read. Also, your ability to walk the tight rope between lulz and serious business never ceases to delight me. The description of the landing fighter wing was glorious.

[Malivotti]

Quite a nice chapter, as Darth Raptor pointed out the action of the Black Prince's fighter wing to the landing field situation was glorious indeed and very much in tune with a collection of combat soldiers that spend too much time on the sharp end. The barroom brawls that the Black Prince crews get into must things of legend with the SPs.

The telling point is the actions/reactions of the Stormtroopers to the whole Thrawn/Lady Lyria situations. Stormtroopers follow orders, the clones pretty much have to, but the Stormtroopers even the clones they trust Lennart to do the right thing.

Scary.

[Andras]

The rockery->bombery line had me laughing for a good 3 minutes.

[Kartr_Kana]

Excellent chapter as always ECR! I loved how they were needling the "aristo" Damn civvies!

[Raptor_Pilot]

I just got done catching up to the story after vacation, I cant wait to see what happens next.

ECR, your writing has improved a great deal, and it is a pleasure to read this story.
I await your next chapter with barely controlled impatience.

[Master_Baerne]

My dear Raptor Pilot, you should be aware that posting in a popular story thread weeks after the last post will only make people rather FURIOUS AT YOU!

Don't do it again.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

This is taking longer and is harder work to write than I thought it was going to be. Originally supposed to be three scenes, one expanded to fill it all,and I'm sorry for the lack of action. Well, there's a fair amount of metaphorical fencing, but...

The other bits I had intended to fit in were Jorian Lennart kicking himself- something along the lines of wondering how he could do that to Lyria; 'I blackmailed her with the ghost of her son. It's wrong, but practical, so I went through with it anyway. What the kriff kind of parent am I going to turn out to be?'

That and Aldrem and crew on the run. Soon. For the moment...

Hull 721 arc 2 ch 6

The Rear-Admiral was not especially pleased to find a chamber in the forward superstructure labelled ‘Art gallery.’ It was ridiculous to suspect them of mocking him- if they were minded to they could have done it much more simply.

He had been on his way to inspect the axial defence mounts, and how they had been uprated to take weapons of eight hundred times the nominal yield, when he had been directed past this.

They were trying to distract him, of course; not that it would matter. He could learn from this far more than they understood how to draw out.

The pieces within, some of them were exactly that- bits of the ship with images etched, painted, stencilled, drawn or otherwise embedded onto them. Mostly plating from some interior bulkhead or other, usually unlabelled.


At least there was a tour guide. Lieutenant Elyon was so overjoyed to find someone who actually cared that he rambled on, inadvertently giving away almost as much as the displayed works themselves.

By the door, there were two holorecords, one of what looked like a communal mess room after a particularly devastating party, twenty-five crashed out technicians with accompanying debris, except everything in the chamber had been painted in heavy-foliage camo pattern.

‘Lieutenant, the symbolic importance of this piece-‘

‘Is that repainting someone’s AT-AT in pink with Felicitation Feline decals is a really dumb move.’

The Chiss rear-admiral prided himself on his ability to spot connections and see the underlying logic of even the most apparently disconnected facts, but there were at least three layers of impossibility in there. ‘Set that in context for me.’

‘It was one of the pivotal moves of Exercise Midnight Rider; power converter maintenance team fifteen, as you see here, scored a major if artistically simplistic and derivative coup by breaching security around the main vehicle bay.

A simple colour wash and prefabricated decaling is all they had time for, I suppose, but that was deemed not worthy of preservation. This holo captures the legion’s counterstroke.

‘It’s unattributed because the actual perpetrators are unknown, the prime suspects are obviously platoon team BR53, whose vehicle it was, but by the same token they’re a shade too obvious- besides, they’re armoured infantry, they wouldn’t have the subtlety for moves like that.’

‘I see.’ The rear-admiral overstated.


‘Now this was originally displayed at deck level, and is attributed to the Level Nivelo Mouse Droid Collective; a walkthrough immersive, successive layers of optical illusion- move through it slowly.’

Thrawn did; an interesting experience, being immersed in a changing viewpoint, each shift of eyeball bringing a shift of perspective. Droid created? Irony on the part of the artist far more probable.

‘This item here is derivative, insulting, and arguably of no artistic value whatsoever except that it was the item that set the whole problem off and running.’

It was undistinguished urban graffiti, an irreligious insult offered to a believer, consisting of the flatimation image of a bush shaped into a hand with extended middle finger, which then caught fire.

‘The exercise had something to do with the creation of images?’ The rear-admiral asked, trying to trace the causal link.


‘A minor outbreak of disorder, just high spirits, but the captain formalised it and controlled it. Exercise Midnight Rider was an internal security operation, boarding, intrusion and counterintrusion, sabotage and detection and countering of sabotage.’

‘Except instead of bombs, the invading force had to leave a painting. I see.’ He had been wondering why the execution of so many of them seemed so desperately rushed. What an absurd method.

‘Something complex, in any event- to represent time and effort spent in effective sabotage. Curation was the job of those who received rather than those who gave, which produced some interesting situations.

‘We ended up investigating over two hundred of the crew for possible rebel or criminal pasts, due to a suspiciously high degree of talent.’ Lieutenant Elyon said, perversely proud of the fact.

‘Ths knotwork, for instance, in it’s original state-‘ he pressed a switch and the holoimage reverted to it’s original shape, daubed across the breech-blocks of a pair of heavy turbolasers.


‘Were these analysed for rebellious tendencies?’ the admiral asked, casually.

‘Of course. Nothing outside the bounds of normal discipline.’ The guide said, a judgement that looked distinctly influenced by favour to the Rear-Admiral.

‘The followup, on the other hand, where we pretended that our memetic algorithm had become corrupt and put out a tender for a new one, that did net four cells of Rebel slicers who thought they could be cute.

This piece here, a regulatory branch officer being consigned to at least five of the corellian hells, is based on a real person and actually sparked a civil libel trial. The insulted party admitted to four of them but thought five was pushing it. Now-‘


The tour went on, and the rear-admiral found it highly useful in drawing conclusions.

It seemed that the surface forces, after an unpromising beginning in primitivity, had developed away from simple daubs towards surrealism; warped shapes, convoluted geometries, including ‘the impossible staircase under construction’, which included a foreman trying to make sense of plans written on the inside of a klein bottle, and a bricklayer holding a mobius brick and visibly wondering where the kriff he was supposed to put the mortar.

Gunnery tended to neo-realism, and also to parody producing rip-offs and mickey-takes of classic works; Com-Scan and Navigation had dissolved in fratricidal struggles between expressionists and impressionists.

Engineering’s preferred medium was sculpture, when they did resort to pigment or holography it was mainly land, sea and spacescapes, classicist and representational.


‘The second chamber, through this way Admiral, consists of post-Exercise material. This was the last actual act of Midnight Rider.’ Lieutenant Elyon said, waving at a slab of metal with a painting.

It was an oddity, so strictly representational- Engineering, as if the canvas didn’t give that away- as to be almost uncriticisable, not that that would stop any critic from trying.

A gently curved surface with something terrible starting to force it’s way out at the viewer, a stabbing blue- white glare that seemed to be reflecting more light than there was in the room, surrounded by the yellow-to-red flare of vapourising durasteel.

The artist had clearly taken great care over it, layering to produce an almost three dimensional effect. How so?’ Thrawn asked, wondering why they had stopped there.

‘The officer who came across it took a seizure. It was painted on the inner armoured shell of the main reactor, you see.’ Elyon said.

‘Actual physical harm, from a painting?’ the rear-admiral marvelled.

‘To a neurotic power systems specialist, from a painting of a containment failure, yes.’

How closely and specifically targeted had that been? ‘The artist?’

‘Never officially identified,’ the curator admitted, but considering means, motive and opportunity, the chief suspect-‘


‘Ah, there you are rear- admiral, I thought you’d be in here.’ The voice came from a two hundred kilo man, twenty kilos of which were body hair; the chief suspect, for this and several other crimes. ‘I thought you were looking for me? We got a note to expect your arrival, we had a presentation laid out and ready.’

A good thing to avoid; a set piece presentation would probably be an exercise in deception- as if they weren’t usually anyway. How many separate violations of uniform regulations and personal care were there? Dozens?

The long hair and beard alone could have landed most officers time in the mines of Kessel. If what Thrawn had seen so far was a guide, the Starfleet couldn’t afford to lose him- still less give him a ticket to near the Maw Cluster. If he escaped and got loose in there, who knew what would come out?

‘Your work?’ Thrawn said, meaning the painting.

‘Who else is going to take responsibility for peeling off and replacing a slice of the inner containment vessel? The painting, well, that could have been anyone in my department.’ He lied, calmly.


Thrawn was about to say that it had to have been someone with a technical mind, but it was obvious that it could, indeed, have been anyone in engineering- no distinction to be had there.

‘Besides which, it worked out in the long run.’ Mirannon admitted. ‘Ranner got the help he needed to cool his nerves down and stop reacting like that; once he got over the shock even he admitted that whoever pranked him did him a favour.’

‘There must have been easier ways.’ The chiss rear- admiral stated. ‘Why are you not in your office?’

‘Too much to do to waste time sitting around waiting for you to show up.’ The big engineer said. Deliberately giving offence? ‘So I came looking and really, around here, where else were you likely to be?’

Now that was a definite insult, the rear admiral thought. He’s suggesting that I am predictable- and somehow he manages to find me in an art gallery. Perhaps he has a point.


‘Motivator five? Nothing there to see any more, actually. Forward main sensor dome, upper structural harness? Or how about the obvious,’ Mirannon said, rubbing the point in, before adding ‘the heavy axials?’

‘How many of your adaptations and innovations have passed any form of peer review?’ Thrawn asked- challenged- the hairy engineer.

‘All of them in some form or other. What, you think I’m such a feverish concentration of talent that I can outreact and out-innovate the entire galaxy?’ Mirannon said, apparently amused by the thought- and partly thinking he really doesn’t get how it works, does he. ‘Nobody’s that good.’

That was a deliberate barb, the Chiss rear-admiral interpreted.


‘Let me show you- the turret sockets and bracing are actually based on the main mounts of an Arrogant-class pursuit destroyer.’ Mirannon walked over to one of the holo display tables, wiped what was there- a caricature of a bronze skinned man in a dress uniform jacket sitting on a toilet- and brought up a schematic.

‘Very casual of you.’ The rear-admiral noted.

‘There are only so many ways to depict “screaming through gritted teeth with rage, pain and frustration at intestinal discomfort”- seen one tormented bowel movement, you’ve seen them all, and it’s really just a touched up still from security holocam footage anyway.’ Mirannon said, unsympathetically. ‘Now this-‘


Thrawn had of course recognised the former executive officer who had lost his mind- or been driven out of it. What was the true meaning of that business? Lennart had his flaws as a personnel manager, who did not?

He had allowed a brittle, hollow man to rise beyond his competence, let his long- time colleagues savage him and break him open, and then refused to use the broken shards of the man as a weapon- not through conscience, the personality that could have set that up wouldn’t baulk at phantoms.

Then again, that hypothetical personality probably wouldn’t have had the empathy and quickness of wit to talk Mirhak-Ghulej down, and certainly wouldn’t have thought it worth the risk to do so in person.

It was interesting that he had allowed things to degenerate that far- were there issues of trust between him and his senior staff that could perhaps be exploited to shake the truth loose? Possibly from the chief engineer.


‘As you can see from this stress diagram- this is the standard Imperator one, batch one, this is Black Prince as built, this is the current state, this is as predicted post refit. Watch how the strain changes as simulated forces are applied to the structure.’

Mirannon ran through a series of evolutions, stress and strain showing as false colour as acceleration was piled on the models. ‘All up of course, dynamic management in place.’

Stepping up the power, pushing well past any acceleration the engines could reasonably have been expected to achieve, twisting and turning- it was a test to destruction, adding simulated impacts, shear from tidal pull, heat and radiation.

The ship was, expectably, far tougher than the crew; they were all long- well, thinly smeared- dead when the first, the standard early Imperator-I hull failed.

The as- built diagram and current state ran a close race, actually displaying different points of failure; the original hull ripping open under almost a million gravities of deceleration, compacting and splintering.

The current version with better lateral and longitudinal reinforcement lasting until one point oh four five million of acceleration, structure collapsing in on itself largely because of the increased weight of the lateral strengthening.

The final version, the one he hoped to build, lasted significantly longer than that. If it was an honest, accurate and comprehensive test, and Thrawn expected simply from the character of the man that it was, then it was a considerable achievement.

How was it possible, though? ‘Eighty days, to accomplish all of that?’


‘Days are irrelevant,’ Mirannon waved the concept away, ‘man hours are what matter. Ten million should be enough for this, and if I yell at the crew a bit I can probably get fifteen million out of them.’

Fifteen thousand personnel, three thousand of which were in other specialties not useful to the procedure, over eighty days- he was counting on somewhere from ten and a half to fifteen and a half hours of useful work from each of them, per day.

‘It can hardly have escaped your notice that you are currently in a dockyard.’ The rear-admiral pointed out. ‘Why are you proposing to work at crisis pace, yourselves?’

‘We have evolved procedures that permit the major reconstruction of the ship with minimal intrusion- a modification of damage control procedure. We don’t need to lift half the upper hull off to fit a replacement spar.’ Mirannon said, matter of fact.


Clearly these people were even stranger than he had been led to believe, the rear-admiral noted. That was the fifth impossible thing he had been told this morning. Their failure to follow Correct Thought alone was enough to condemn them.

That was hardly the weapon that he, an outsider and a nonhuman, had expected to find to his hand, considering how many time he had had to avoid or roll with it himself. Were these people potential allies, or the brush his enemies expected to tar him with?

‘How is that possible?’ he asked, trying not to sound too interested, and knew it was wasted effort and a silly move when the huge chief engineer grinned, pulled a pair of sensor- webbed work gloves off his belt and put them on, and drew a sprayer and a remote control.

The crew had already learned to duck and cover when they caught sight of that remote. Spray a heavy mist into the air, set it up on the control- encapsulate the mist and squeeze.


There was a flash of brilliant, colour-erasingly intense light and a rumble of infrasound, and as the rear-admiral’s vision cleared, the engineer was holding something that looked like a fat, handle-less lightsabre blade.

And twisting it. Clearly the forcefield was reacting to the glove sensors, but it was a fundamentally crazy thing to be doing anyway, was it not?

A few pulls and squeezes later- the science is sound, probably, the rear admiral kept reminding himself- Mirannon asked him ‘You do project a human- normal bioelectric field, don’t you?’

‘Point three four over.’ The rear-admiral answered, resenting the question as an intrusion on his privacy- but under the circumstances, there was probably a good technical reason for it, and it seemed unwise to object forcibly to a question posed by a man with a small nuclear explosion in his hands.

Mirannon finished twisting it to shape, and patted the balloon animal- a pittin- on it’s backside, sending it gliding across to the rear-admiral, where it hovered- point three four of the set separation distance further away than it would have otherwise.


‘Proton-boron fusion in the palm of your hand. Force field containment- we can do full foundry work, on site- we can fuse in and temper main structural beams in place, on a node by node basis. The only problem is that I really need more practise at balloon animals.’ Mirannon said, deadpan.

He was quite aware that he was giving away a lot, but that particular secret couldn’t be kept anyway, and there was another and nastier surprise he had for the rear admiral later on.

Thrawn looked at the glowing, pressurised force field bubble and tried to think coherently and controlledly as his mind raced through the implications.

Presumably this wasn’t something the chief engineer had come up with last week- he had been in mortal danger from the moment he stepped on board, his only safety those of the ship’s personnel who might be caught in the blast, and Lennart’s recognition of the political unwisdom of it.


Of course, Kor Alric must have been in similar danger. Yet, he had apparently not been killed that way, but by something far less domestic, far more visible and far more damaging to the ship. They could have killed him so much more neatly, and with so much more to investigate.

What were the possibilities? That whatever Kor Alric’s personal effects and personal files revealed about him would prove him to be a loyal servant of the Empire, thus making it murder after all, and they had destroyed the evidence?

In that case, why had they gone to all the trouble of behaving as if they were innocent? They shouldn’t have been able to do that good a job of acting, and they should have run for it at the first opportunity.

It was also, given what little background his own sources had been able to ferret out on Kor Alric, unlikely. Insofar as there was such a thing at all, he was of the conspiratorial sort; at odds with himself and prone to whipsawing between complex, elaborate solutions to his personal problems and brutally simple ones.


Was it conceivable that the conspiracy did exist- and the use of overkill was a way of hiding the evidence? There was no corpse, after all, nothing but a thin layer of contaminated carbon.

So Kor Alric had faked his own death with Lennart’s consent in order to pursue some sort of anti- throne course of action…no, that was multiplying entities beyond necessity. If it turned out to be true, perhaps, but not unless it really was the “whatever is left, however improbable”.

A slight modification of that theory; Lennart had murdered Adannan intending to take his place in the conspiracy. Not inherently improbable considering life at court in general, but what sort of conspiracy was it that required someone to kill an existing member to be allowed in?


A bloodthirsty one. Yet that didn’t fit exactly either- or on the surface appeared to fit too well. Lennart’s bloodstained record gave him the first- glance appearance of someone who might fit that mould, but on closer investigation and closer acquaintance, no.

I do not believe he could have gone through with that, Thrawn thought; a strange man, but one who fundamentally believes himself, rightly or wrongly, to be a moral one and acts and measures himself accordingly. Occasionally he fails.

Was what was at the root of it all, a failed attempt to recruit Lennart to the conspiracy? Assuming that such a thing actually existed- the nature of power exercised from the shadows made it inevitable that something of the sort did.

The cockup theory explained most of history, apart from the inconvenient fact that sometimes the conspiracy theories were true, because it was in the nature of many lifeforms to conspire. The political animal above all.


So, some shadowy cabal or other, of the approximately eighty to choose from at the Court of Courts, had laid claim to him, and Lennart had played along. Up to the point where one of his own inner circle, on detached duty, had blown out the Imperial suite of his own ship.

Destroying all the evidence except that which he already had- a very dangerous position to put himself in, with only his own word to support his innocence, a few fragments of datafile…and whatever he could manage by arousing the investigating officer’s suspicions.

Interestingly, then- Senior Chief Aldrem had been administratively punished once for taking a shot he shouldn’t have- into the middle of a fighter melee.

Coincidence, assuming there could credibly be said to be such a beast? Setup? Simply an emerging behaviour pattern? He was a superb shot; Thrawn would have said that the shot that had demolished the Imperial suite was clearly impossible, if not for the evidence that it had been done.

He was also dangerously enthusiastic about his job, had tried to sign out a platoon support weapon as a personal sidearm, and had made at least one call to Kuat’s sales division inquiring about prices to private customers for surface to orbit artillery.

Apparently, Thrawn thought, I’m supposed to think that Aldrem believed he knew what was in his captain’s mind, and acted on it, independently- and overenthusiastically. It might even be true.

He could safely be left for the police- at the moment. Once they had eliminated all the obvious possibilities, then Thrawn’s personal guard detachment could go to work on what was left.


The Chiss rear- admiral’s pause for thought did not go unnoticed. ‘Not being too technical for you, am I?’ Mirannon asked, from the middle of a thicket of holographic equations.

‘As fascinating as this is, Engineer-Commander, it is a secondary matter; my specific objective here is to investigate the death of Kor Alric Adannan.’ Thrawn reminded him, the big engineer took it without visible reaction.

‘I know many people find inspiration in combustion, looking into a naked chemical flame; I suppose nuclear balloon animals could have the same effect.’ He said.

‘I doubt they’ll catch on.’ Thrawn said, dryly. ‘I wished to see all of this, but you were at least as eager to show it to me.’

‘Apart from the sheer technical fascination of it,’ Mirannon explained, ‘I want you to see that there is method to our madness. If I’m an innovator at all, I’m an engineering innovator- I borrow theories and diagrams and crossbreed them, but I don’t invent any more than a dewback breeder invents his animals.

Our engine mounts are actually based on a design study for an ultrafast VIP transport hived off from the Tector project- uprated engines mated to a standard hull frame. The weapon arrangement was signed off on for the later batches anyway, although fitting it would involve admitting the fleet were wrong about the turret arrangement to begin with.

All sound, worked out designs; putting them together was interesting, and the actual physical work of assembly is going to be a fascinating challenge, but there is as little whole cloth used as possible.’


This from a man who was about to add three point five trillion terawatts to his ship’s generating capacity and ninety-four million tons to the mass. ‘Does anyone else in the entire universe agree with you on that subject?’ the rear-admiral asked.

‘Only the Head of the Design Team at KDY-Kuat.’ Mirannon exaggerated. In fact he had sent them a submission, and got back a note that had begun “Whoever came up with this is obviously a maniac.”

Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but then somebody had obviously noted the identity of the author and gone into great detail on the subject of exactly why it was a bad idea, engineer to engineer.

It had been an excellent guide to what he actually had to do, and the main outstanding problems after the redraft were all related to the human factor and thus matters of assignment and training, not of machinery.

Someone had come to visit from Fondor, too; have to deal with that next.

‘Hm.’ Thrawn said, noncommittally. Hardly consistent with this ship’s reputation or for that matter Kuat’s- but that was in itself logical, there had to be more organisation and discipline to the setup than there seemed to be.

‘If the containment were to fail, or to be dropped-‘ he said, bouncing the bubble animal on the palm of his hand, ‘you can fusion bomb any compartment in the ship at will, correct? So why did you not use that capability, or at least containment alone, against Kor Alric? Could he not have been held for trial?’


‘Trial by whom, for what?’ Mirannon said, well aware of exactly what and wondering if maybe… pointless, counterproductive showing his hand too soon. ‘There’s the minor technical issue that we stopped him before he could do it.

No practical option; as I understand it, he retained his full legal authority, and would do so until actually impeached. A sudden murder when the ship’s stormtrooper complement were largely absent was the only way to keep the empire safe from him.

Consider it, in fact; his method, his defence against us was his based on exploiting and misusing properly constituted authority. One of his minions actually claimed that he could order us to believe that he was loyal and we had no legal recourse but to obey.

I don’t know about you, but that offends me- I’m not at all surprised we blew him up.’


The case was proving to be an interesting conundrum so far, the chiss thought; parts showed clear sign of premeditation, parts rapid, brilliant improvisation, parts obviously desperation in action.

Perhaps he should take Lennart up on his challenge, fight that simulated duel after all; it might prove to be invaluable in really getting to know the man, how he and his team fought.

‘You do, of course, have security footage of the interactions and conversations that convinced you of this.’ Thrawn stated.

‘Ground force command are the people to talk to about that, them and regulatory branch.’ Mirannon lied. It was particularly important that the admiral not realise that something like the backscatter tap was possible, he might start putting two and two together and realise what else could be done.

‘That’s not the full story, is it?’ he asked. Crap, Mirannon thought, he knew. No, not all, might save something out of this yet.


‘Kor Alric sensed that something was about to go wrong- with the force, he would, wouldn’t he?’ Mirannon tried to make it sound like an admission under duress. ‘Believe me, he had given us no reason to think fondly of him- it’s a wonder he could distinguish the true from the false positive his danger sense must have been giving off.

He scattered his minions, sent them to summon help; they didn’t all die on the bridge. One of them made a remarkably half-arsed attempt to murder me.’ That bit came out as only slightly indignant.

To probe that, Thrawn asked ‘So, relations between Kor Alric and the ship were adverse?’

‘Degenerated far enough that some sort of act of violence was inevitable.’ Mirannon made no more of it than the admiral did.

‘You seem curiously unoffended.’ The admiral asked.

‘It was a curiously ineffectual attempted murder. Tell me,’ Mirannon asked, ‘what does the law say the situation is when a detached political official’s civilian aide attempts to kill a naval officer?’

‘Legalistically, it depends on the portfolio of the official. With the right of oversight, a high official can promote, demote, and execute. If he had that right as part of his portfolio, and if the aide was properly deputised to exercise it, it could have been a legally legitimate summary execution.’ Thrawn had had occasion to look that up recently.

‘He never got through the preamble.’ Mirannon stated. ‘All I got out of him was “grr, arg, aieee”. I don’t think that counts as proper legal notification.’

The admiral had to admire his sangfroid. ‘Surely a technicality?’

‘You live subject to the same regime.’ Mirannon pointed out. ‘Never grasped at a technicality?’ It was probably not coincidence that the bubble set brightened, as if it was thinning out- ready to rupture and kill somebody.


‘I find politics to be a more reliable means of self- preservation than the law. That very lack of precision and decision makes for a process more open to positive outcomes.’

‘I’m impressed.’ Mirannon admitted. ‘No wonder you made flag rank if you have the stones-‘ was it his imagination or did Thrawn wince slightly at that?- ‘to try to counterblackmail a man with an atomic puppet.’

‘I don’t think that’s going to be necessary.’ The chiss admitted. Message received and understood- quid pro quo was fair game, but no quid, no quo.

‘In the absence of Captain Lennart-‘ he began to ask.

‘Commander Brenn. He spends more time on the bridge than most, knows the captain’s mind on a moment to moment basis.’

‘I see.’ The chiss went away turning the situation over in his mind. Undoubtedly the law could be used against them to push them into disclosing- what? It wasn’t as if they were keeping any real technical secrets; the chief engineer was not afraid to show someone else what was going on under the hood.

They expected to be able to talk or bluff their way out of this, were trying to play with him by dribbling a fact at a time, and as soon as he managed to get ahead of them and work out what the answers were, he could decide what the price for allowing them to succeed was going to be.


Mirannon, at the same time, was breathing a sigh of relief. Not because he was out of danger- he wasn’t- but because he could now do what he had in mind with an entirely clear conscience.

They still had the hyperspace orbiting scanner they had ‘retrieved’ from a rebel attempt to hijack one, and while it really wasn’t as good as it was billed to be it did have it’s uses.

Supposed to be capable of bypassing all practical forms of security by monitoring the movement of particles from a tachyonic perspective- doing what any reasonably good quantum interference diode could do, but with no possibility of shielding- it didn’t really have the processing power and resolution for that.

It ha it’s tactical uses- hovered in a pocket of Black Prince’s hyperfield when under way, the contours of the pocket operating like a canard foreplane, to make a rude analogy; added something to the low to medium speed agility of the ship.

Here, at anchor, with a clear operational field, it should be able to do something much closer to it’s proper job. Even if tracing the individual photons in a high spec computer was too much to ask, the big, fuzzy electrochemical changes of the human- or more to the point, Chiss- brain should be easier to track.

It would be interesting to see if brain patterns could be reliably tracked from hyperspace, and even more interesting to see if those impressions could be reliably reassembled chronologically, to reconstruct the processes that had formed the mind and the brain in the first place.

It would be fascinating to see what sort of blackmail material the rear-admiral had on himself.

[Vehrec]

*jawdrop*

Ok, more seriously. Main problem with this plan is that reading the patterns is one thing, but without context it will be very hard to interpret the idiosyncratic patterns of an individual brain. Each one grows and prunes itself a little differently, and that could result in some very different 'operating systems' even between two members of the same species. Sensory information would be the most straightforward, but things like internal ruminations and memories would probably vary widely.

[jpdt19]

Excellent

Sorry to hear about your moment. When the muse is fickle, she can be, irritating!

I must admit, i found it somewhat hard to keep up with what was happening between Thrawn and Mirannon !

Still, i liked the art gallery scene,

Anyway, keep up the good work

[Master_Baerne]

Atomic balloons? Countersabotage training through artwork? You, sir, are a genius.

[Thanas]

*jawdrop*

Ok, more seriously. Main problem with this plan is that reading the patterns is one thing, but without context it will be very hard to interpret the idiosyncratic patterns of an individual brain. Each one grows and prunes itself a little differently, and that could result in some very different 'operating systems' even between two members of the same species. Sensory information would be the most straightforward, but things like internal ruminations and memories would probably vary widely.

I agree - especially considering that they have no medical files on the chiss at all.

[Vianca]

Intresting, Mirrannon is going to use a long range Hyperscanner to spy on Trawn himself?
What's next, using the sensor suite to pick up everything Trawn say's to anybody when he's not onboard?

[Kartr_Kana]

This just keeps getting better and better! And don't worry about the lack of action this time around. The politics of the situation are at least as interesting as any space battle.

[LadyTevar]

I loved the balloon animal