IMPERIAL FALL: The Jewel of the Empire
Ahead in the distance, a gleaming golden-orange sun sparkled amid the unending brilliance of starlight that was the center of the galaxy. The sun alone gave no hint of anything unusual. It was merely one of perhaps a hundred billion stars like it in the galaxy. Yet orbiting around this particular star there revolved a planet that more than anything else was the Empire.
Watching from the secondary command bridge on the Imperial Star Destroyer Pegasus, Grand Moff Audrey Gustan gazed out the viewport at Coruscant; the city-world that acted as the administrative and cultural capital world of the Galactic Empire and the Republic before it. Audrey Gustan had served this planet and the galaxy-spanning government it represented for a majority of his life.
Though still quite young by the political standards of his office, Gustan was pushing fifty and the years were starting to catch up to him. By any reasonable estimate, he had passed the halfway point and no longer could he consider himself to still having the best years in front of him.
The darkness of space outside the viewport combined with the abundance of light inside the Pegasus made it possible for Gustan to observe himself in a fairly detailed reflection. Gustan had always thought of himself as a "younger" man. Even when his hair started to grey, he believed the changed made him appear more dignified, rather than elderly. And the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth were evidence of good cheer, even as others chose to describe them as "grandfatherly." And even though his joints ached more and more frequently, Gustan decided it was only an effect of a still-active lifestyle. But now, confronted by the reality of his reflection, Audrey Gustan wasn't so certain. When did I get so old?
In the flickering pseudomotion of faster-than-light travel, a ship emerged from the incomprehensible ether of hyperspace and kindly awoke Gustan from his trance. Not more than twenty kilometers distant, the ominous slate-grey wedge of another Imperial Star Destroyer had appeared amid a fleet of a dozen or so medium-sized transport ships.
In only a few moments the newly sighted ship had re-oriented itself and continued its thoughtless lurch towards the planet, unappreciative of the miracle that allowed beings from all over the galaxy to travel amongst the stars. Once again Gustan was left starring at his reflection, feeling even older, as though those recent seconds had squandered away a bit more of his youth.
He grasped in his mind, seeking to draw the parallel between his two, seemingly unrelated trains of thought. What did his lost youth and the now-commonplace wonder of interstellar travel have in common? When suddenly it dawned on him: How easily we learn to take things for granted.
Gustan, who was himself a student of history, reached back into the days of his youth when he first heard stories of the mad explorers who dared to trespass into the unknown arena of hyperspace. For hyperspace, as the saying went, was a realm that was neither real, nor unreal; a path that occupied neither space nor time.
In the early days of hyper-spatial travel, it was only for the bravest of pilots. Those heroes who stretched out into the unknown universe only to be killed or thrust into an alternate dimension or whatever the pop-science theory of the day was used to explain what happened to those poor souls who were lost in hyperspace. It made for great science fiction and seemingly unending were the ghost stories of the lost ships and their dead crews.
But inevitably sentience struggles on. And over the millennia, technology improves and things that were once unimaginable become commonplace. Gustan used his hands to support his weight as he leaned against the transparisteel viewport and gazed into the space around the Galactic Capital. As the Pegasus continued its approach, the galactic hub of Coruscant began to take shape.
In the vastness of space above the planet, millions of ships swarmed like insects. Fleets of grain and transport ships worked tirelessly to supply food to a planet that produced none and remove waste from a world that produced all too much. "How easily we seem to take things for granted," this time allowing his thoughts just enough volume to escape from his lips.
At the sound of approaching footsteps, Gustan quickly rose from his comfortable lean against the viewport. It wouldn't do for a member of the crew to see a Grand Moff, one of the highest ranking members of Imperial governance, in such a posture.
"Your Eminence?" an uncertain voice inquired. Gustan looked over the young officer. A Lieutenant according to the rank plate across the left breast of his uniform, not someone who often dealt with high-ranking political officers and the man's uneasiness bled into the room.
The Lieutenant's intrusion into his solitude was most unwelcome and Gustan allowed some of his irritation to bleed into his voice. "Yes Lieutenant," came the icy reply. Gustan knew it wasn't appropriate to blame the interruption on the Lieutenant, who was after all, just doing his job. After all, the whole reason the Pegasus was even traveling to Coruscant was to escort Gustan to his audience with the Emperor. As such, it was the responsibility of the commander of the ship to make sure that the Grand Moff was informed of any developments. The Lieutenant simply had been given the unenviable task of intruding upon Gustan's solitude and it was unfair to punish the man for simply carrying out an order.
Still, Gustan had responded the way he had and there was no point imagining "how things should have gone." Nor would it do for a Grand Moff to apologize to the Lieutenant. As one of the highest heads of government, even his mistakes had to seem intentional. And perhaps there was some way he could make this exchange instructional. Well young man, let's see how your training has taught you to deal with the undeserved fury of an Imperial Governor.
The Lieutenant did not disappoint. All indecision seemingly vacated the officer and in a manner becoming an officer of the Fleet, he seemingly redoubled his resolve and spoke in the crisp, clear voice of an officer. "The Pegasus will achieve geosynchronous orbit in seven minutes, your eminence. Once we have, your shuttle should receive clearance through Coruscant's shields."
Gustan wondered if the Lieutenant's sudden change in demeanor was a product of being put under pressure by an administrator of high office, or if it was the shielded contempt officers sometimes felt towards a civilian who becomes overzealous with their perceived authority. After all, Gustan was aware of the reputation of Moffs and Grand Moffs among members of the Fleet to be cold and aloof, as though their positions of administrative power, granted by the kindness of the Emperor, somehow made them superior, regal even.
Gustan had always done his best to never give in to such an ill-fated illusion. He saw how this attitude, inspired by men like Grand Moff Tarkin, hindered collaborative effort between the administrative and executive parts of Imperial governance. Not to mention making it a pain in the ass to have to deal with the default hostility that most members in the Fleet now had for the Moffs.
Still, such was the galaxy he lived in. No reason he couldn't try to change the perceptions of this one officer. "Thank you Lieutenant."
The Lieutenant paused. "Will there be anything else, your Eminence?" he asked with just a touch of insincerity.
"As a matter of fact, there will be, Lieutenant. Won't you please join me?" Gustan gestured with one arm to his right.
The Lieutenant, clearly expecting a summary dismissal, was caught off guard. Hesitantly he stepped forward to stand beside the Grand Moff at the viewport. Gustan turned and was once again facing the stars. "You have the look of an Academy man about you Lieutenant. I'm guessing you graduated five years ago?" Gustan intentionally overestimated the number of years the obviously very young Lieutenant had been in the service.
"Three-and-a-half actually, your Eminence."
"And already serving as a duty office aboard an Imperial Star Destroyer. You must have done quite well there."
"Yes, your Eminence. I finished in the top three percent of my class."
"Very impressive, Lieutenant. And I imagine you dream of one day receiving your own command of a ship like the Pegasus? Or perhaps even rising to the rank of Admiral some day? Admiral Mikhail Drossus Tartabul. It has a certain ring to it, doesn't it Lieutenant?"
Lieutenant Tartabul was blushing now, due in equal part to the naming of his fantasy aloud and the fact that one of the highest ranking members of Imperial governance had known his name. Fighting hard to keep a smile from forming on his lips, "I would be lying if I said I did not have such dreams, your Eminence." He said sheepishly. "But I am also aware of the realities. There are tens of billions of members of the Imperial Fleet, a hundred million of which graduated from the Academy."
"And only seven thousand or so Star Destroyers," Gustan nodded solemnly as he completed the Lieutenants thought. "Still one never knows when such dreams may come true, Lieutenant." After all, I certainly never thought I would be where I am today.
A brief silence engulfed the secondary bridge.
"Tell me Lieutenant," began the Grand Moff, using his hand to indicate towards the planet that was steadily growing larger in the viewport. "What is your opinion of the world below?"
"Coruscant sir?" asked the Lieutenant, a bit shocked. "It is the Capital of the Empire, the throne of the Emperor's New Order, and the center of the galaxy."
"It is indeed all of those things Lieutenant, but tell me, as a graduate of the Academy, what is its strategic situation?
"Strategic situation, your Eminence?"
"Yes, if you were tasked with planning to capture Coruscant, I wonder how would you hope to accomplish it?"
"That is impossible sir! The Coruscant Sector Fleet alone has sixteen star destroyers, not to mention support ships, planetary-based fighters and weaponry, Golan Space Battle Stations, and of course the planetary double-layered shields. Any assault on Coruscant would be impossible. The planet is impregnable."
But the Lieutenant's agitation had no effect on Gustan. He smiled warmly at the reflection, waited a moment, and continued in the soft tone of a schoolteacher tutoring a favorite pupil. "Certainly that is the common thinking among members of the Empire. But tell me Lieutenant, is a frontal assault the only way to capture a planet?"
"What do you mean?"
Gustan had noticed that by this point, the Lieutenant was engaged enough that formal titles had disappeared from their conversation. "Look at the planet Lieutenant, see how many ships it takes just to keep such a planet well fed. There must be a thousand bulk cruisers a day that unload foodstuffs from the worlds. Tell me, where do they come from?"
"From the worlds of the agro-combine," came the supremely confident reply. After all, every school child knew that the vast number of worlds under the supervision of the Agro-Combine supplied foodstuffs to a majority of the core worlds, most notably Coruscant."
"And do you know how many of those agricultural worlds it takes to keep the trillion citizens of Coruscant fed?"
The Lieutenant was a bit more uncertain this time. "Two or three?"
"Forty-Seven worlds it takes to feed this one."
"Forty-seven!" exclaimed the incredulous officer.
"Forty-seven. It takes forty-seven worlds full of economic slaves working and living in some of the worst conditions anywhere in the Empire to produce enough of a food surplus to feed our glorious capital." The Grand Moff choked back his personal disgust. He had fought long and hard to improve the quality of life conditions on many of those worlds and as yet, to no avail. The political power of the Agro-Combine was still too great and the potential profits of exploiting the masses still too great. Regardless, it wouldn't be fitting to express his personal opinions on the matter to a single, rather low-ranking Fleet officer.
"Now tell me Lieutenant, if for some reason those ships constantly ferrying our precious foodstuffs were to be interrupted, how long do you suppose would Coruscant's food reserves last?"
The Lieutenant gave him a suspicious look. "A month?" he asked, clearly trying to undercut the actual amount of time it would take. After all, this was Coruscant, the center of Imperial life; the capital of the galaxy. Surely they kept more than a months worth of supplies in case of an emergency. Such was the tragically misplaced ideals that were held by almost every member of Imperial society.
But Grand Moff Audrey Gustan was one of the few who knew the truth. "Less than a week," he answered solemnly.
"Less than a week!"
Gustan once again found himself in awe of how greatly the myth of Coruscant the Impervious had pervaded the social consciousness. After all, he was giving away no State secret. It wasn't even as though that little fact had been confided in him. It was simply the inescapable truth drawn from census and storage statistics available to any Imperial citizen, should they only ask for them.
The gap in critical thinking was staggering. This Lieutenant was clearly a bright young officer who had all the benefits of an excellent education and training, and yet the ability to piece together seemingly simple facts escaped him completely.
"Is that really so surprising Lieutenant? Consider that the average human eats 2.1 kilos of food per day. If we consider that Coruscant has a population of roughly a trillion, that's more than 2.1 trillion kilos of food consumed each day."
"But not all trillion are humans," the Lieutenant interjected.
"No, but roughly 78% are, and the amount of nourishment consumed human beings falls almost perfectly in the middle of the spectrum. If I were to take Pawalodians for instance, who consume more than 5 kilos of food each day, that week I was talking about shrinks rather quickly."
The Grand Moff paused, awaiting any further objection before taking the Lieutenant's silence as acceptance of the facts he had presented and continued his explanation.
"You see Lieutenant, on a planet like Coruscant, where space is obscenely expensive and the average citizen has to cram into an apartment that is barely a hundred cubic meters, there really isn't enough room to idly store a couple trillion kilos of bulk food. Or to put it more accurately, the consensus among the bean pushers on Coruscant is that it would not be fiscally prudent to devote any more room to such a useless enterprise as hedging against the starvation of the citizens there. In fact, there are those who point to the strength of the Imperial Fleet and ask why we even need to have our current emergency supply."
Gustan could see the Lieutenant's eyes light up at the mention of the Imperial Fleet. For it was one thing for the Lieutenant to engage with a civilian in discussion of the socio-economic realities of the planet below; in such a conversation, Lieutenant Tartabul was more-or-less a bystander, but to finally bring up the strength of the Imperial Fleet, now that was a subject that the Lieutenant could speak on with authority. He straightened up and unknowingly took the Grand Moff's bait.
"They may have a point your Eminence. After all, what possible threat could interrupt supply of Coruscant for even a day, let alone a week? Even if the rebels were to throw together every single ship they had into a single combined fleet, they would be no match for Coruscant's planetary defenses, let alone the Sector Fleet."
The Grand Moff smiled knowingly. "Of course, that is the standing philosophy Lieutenant. But tell me, have the rebels ever committed to such a pitched battle? If you were somehow to imagine yourself trying to overthrow the Empire, instead of protecting it, would you do something so foolhardy as to throw your pitiful forces against the Imperial capital? Or would you opt instead for the guerrilla-style tactics of the rebellion?"
"No Lieutenant, the rebels are smart enough to know that they cannot compete against the strength of our Fleet ship-to-ship. Therefore they will have to try a different approach, such as cutting off Coruscant's food supply. And the most effective way to do that would be to sew insurrection among the exploited working-class populace of the worlds of the Agro-Combine."
Gustan could see that the Lieutenant was extremely uncomfortable at the current line of questioning. Loyalty to the Empire was drilled into its soldiers early and often; and imagining even for just a moment to be on the other side of the increasingly heated Galactic Civil War seemed too much for the Lieutenant to take. He stood barely composed in his olive grey uniform, every ounce of effort clearly being extolled just to maintain the appearance of dignity.
"Why are you telling me this, your Excellency?" he asked exhaustedly.
Audrey paused for a moment. Why was he explaining all of this to a lowly deck officer whom he would probably never see again? It had started because he didn't like the fact that the Lieutenant had clearly believed him to be a pompous twit. But there were better and more economical ways to achieve that goal. Ways that wouldn't have resulting in near-convulsions on the part of the Lieutenant.
Why discuss his views about the vulnerability of Coruscant and the Agro-Combine with this Lieutenant? Was it truly because he thought the Lieutenant should know these things? Or was it because when Audrey tried to discuss such things with people that mattered, people that actually had the power to limit the planet's vulnerabilities or require more humane treatment of the working class members of the Agro-Combine, such requests fell upon deaf ears? Audrey took a second and searched his feelings; the latter was undoubtedly true, but such wouldn't be a suitable explanation for a Grand Moff to give to a Lieutenant, so Gustan decided on something a little more seemly, but nonetheless true..
"I am telling you this Lieutenant, because I believe that it is a fundamental flaw to measure the strength of the Empire by the number of destroyers in the fleet. For even with a million Star Destroyers at your back you could not compel the obedience of every citizen of the galaxy. No," Gustan gestured out the viewport at the obscene number of stars, "the strength of the Empire ultimately lies in the goodwill of the people."
And with that, Grand Moff Audrey Gustan turned and left the secondary command bridge.
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