The shuttle meandered its way through hyperspace, with most of the crew asleep.
The course was plotted and the nav computer was looking after it, so there was nothing to do but doze, amuse yourself in the privacy of your own quarters, or someone else's if you were lucky, or sit on the flight- deck and watch the streaks of stars go by.
The seven-man crew had done this times beyond count, and although they were carrying a relatively valuable cargo- heavy servos for the secondary turrets, blaster gas for everything that went 'zap', and a replacement squadron commander- just let the ship get on with it, even this near breakout.
The replacement was on the fight deck, along with the co-pilot, who had drawn the short straw. Both were looking out of the radically-sloped main viewscreen.
'Are you sure you should be doing that? It starts to play weird tricks with your head after a while.' The shuttle officer said, lazily. Best to make it sound as unofficial as possible; his passenger outranked him.
Privately, the passenger agreed. Somewhere past the screaming blue-white nodes racing at them, there was a capital ship waiting with a squadron of hyperspace capable fighters. He would probably be seeing far more than enough of this view, and without room to so much as turn over.
'I mean', said the shuttle pilot, struck by an idea of his own, 'are they really stars?'
'What are you on about?' Peremptory enough, and it would have been worse if half his attention wasn't on the future.
Lieutenant-Commander Aron Jandras, proceed to Ghorn system Vineland sector, take command of Epsilon squadron, composed of Starwing fighter-bombers, of Strike Wing (Provisional) 721 based on board ISD Black Prince, and for doing so this shall be your warrant, to fail at your own risk...although the last part was really superfluous.
'All the streaks. Could be anything- could be dust, meteors, interstellar gas, some kind of leakage from the hyperwave. If they are stars, we must be covering a lot of space. Could have gone half-way round the galaxy without really noticing. Wouldn't that be something, to have seen the universe without ever realising it.'
No real point in jumping on him, Aron thought. Don't have to make an impression; he's not directly under me. Although if this is a fair example, they must be a pretty loose outfit.
He had a point; the nav computer did it all. You told it to go from point A to point B, it came up with possibilities, and you picked one. It was the act of an expert to go through the advanced options like short- cuts and mapping to realspace.
'Then it happens to everybody. You can still know enough to get to where you're going.'
True enough, but not really worth further comment.
The ten- minute warning sounded, and the rest of the crew appeared. Neat enough, and they went through the drill with no appearance of incompetence; manning the piloting and all the gunnery stations, standing by to make a sensor sweep and raise shields.
'How bad is this sector?'
'Huh?' the copilot answered.
'You're preparing to make a combat drop, into the middle of a subsector HQ and major naval base.'
'Pretty bad, but that's not it. Captain would roast us if we didn't.'
'Just how literally do you mean that?'
'Well, he has been known to use lazy or stupid crewmen as jury rigged heat exchangers.'
Although they probably would try to put the wind up him, there was every chance that it was literally true. Star Destroyer captains were judge, jury and executioner on board their own ship, and the megalomaniac count was very high indeed. Not much fun to be on the receiving end of, but the alternative was...impossible. No-one less than superhuman could keep track of and motivate thirty- seven thousand men by any other means. At least, so ran the doctrine.
The shuttle dropped out of hyperspace. Ghorn was a more than usually red- orange star, dim and well through it's life off in the distance on the port bow, and the planet in front of them was far more than usually built- up for this far out in the mid-rim.
Orbital platforms and manufactory modules littered the nearby space, and there were three blobs hanging above one of the poles of the planet.
'There she is.' he said, once he had found the destroyer, and waved Aron over to the station. The co- pilot could still be heard going through identification and traffic control procedures in the background while he examined what the sensors were telling him.
1A2-class Star Destroyer. Built early, rearmed with the new gun fit. Veteran. At first, he swept the narrow- arc optical finder right across it, not quite believing when the direction pointers told him otherwise.
As he zeroed in on it, clear from very slightly above it's beam, he realised that was because he hadn't instantly recognised it as an Imperial fighting ship.
He had half- expected it to be black. What parts of her original hull remained were faded yellow, mostly, and marred in many places by blaster scars; large parts had not remained.
The forward four hundred metres of the ship was brilliant, regulation reflective/conductive white- with an unpleasant series of irregular hummocks just behind the unpainted area that probably marked the ends of major structural members, as if the entire forward quarter of the length of the ship had been torn off and a new one mounted.
There was also a huge unpainted patch low on the starboard midside, with charred edges, where the kamikaze damage had been repaired but never cosmetically aligned.
A deep shredded carbon- marked segment above the starboard vertex marked an attempt to chew it off by turbolaser. There was a tangled heap of molten metal where one of the main scanner domes had been, and a new one mounted on the forward edge of the superstructure, as well as a direct replacement just inboard of the molten lump.
The main superstructure was less impressive than usual, shot up and rebuilt in SSD-black durelium rather than standard durasteel; it also looked off centre, as if the bridge module had been moved- closer inspection revealed that it was the port side of the ship, a mix of bare and some strange red metal, that had been extended outwards, leaving the destroyer lopsided.
There was also a jagged scar at the base of the bridge module, as if someone had tried to blow it off and only just not succeeded.
'Galactic Spirit...' battle damaged wasn't the term, he decided. At a rough estimate, if the ship had taken all of that damage at once- there were numerous blaster scars- she would have been blown apart three times over. Battle fucked was nearer the mark.
'Look under the superstructure.'
There were scars and craters there too. The ship's name and registry number-hull 721. And a series of black blobs that resolved themselves into silhouettes. He looked, and kept looking.
An Old Republic Procurator class battlecruiser. Two Hapan battle dragons. Three alien craft he did not recognise. Two Victory-class Star Destroyers. A Rebel MC-80 Starcruiser. An Imperator-class Star Destroyer with a phoenix mark. More than a dozen lighter capital combatants.
'How did that- that flying junkyard manage to take out a kriffing republic battlewagon?'
'Dumb overconfidence on their part, very smart shooting, and a lot of luck with the terrain.'
'A fair kill tally for a ship that looks as if it crawled out of a junkyard.' he said, impressed but refusing to show it. If they were all directly claimed, the Black Prince had seen a massive amount of combat, even for a ship her age.
'You've got no idea how much work it takes to keep her that way.' he said, enigmatically.
'Yes, Sir.' the pilot could be heard responding to someone on the com link, and he leaned forward to push all the throttles past their safety stops.
Turret 4-Port;
'I get this not.' Pellor Aldrem announced, from the gun pointer's console. He was a fair haired man dressed in a quasi- regulation armoured spacesuit that had been customised to take a gunner's helmet; if their turret did get hit, chances were they were toast, but flukes did happen and he wanted to be ready to take advantage of them.
Technically, he was a Senior Chief Petty Officer; in practise, he was the best shot with a turbolaser on the ship, and held rank as a turret commander accordingly.
'I really wish I just didn't. That slimy jizzbucket Lomarel, he's left half a rationpak smeared over the power monitor. At least I hope it's a rationpak.' The next most senior member of the gun crew, 'Fussy' Fendon, grumbled.
'Yeah, well, he is the guy his own turretmates bought an inflatable nerf for.' Aldrem made an effort to be tolerant. Lomarel had been a member of his own gun crew before being punted up and out, and the chubby, smelly freak sort of grew on you. Then again, so did fungus.
'And a sound damper field. I don't care if he makes a dianoga's nest out of his own turret, if he does we might be rid of him and it would probably do a better job, but why's he allowed to make a mess out of our turret, hey?'
'That's what I don't get. We're in dock, right? Caution, maybe, keeping us busy, maybe, but it's the after turret in each battery that's kept manned. The one with the best all round field of fire.'
Two quad- barreled heavy turbolasers, thermal shroud around each tapering down, adding to the perspective and making them look like a clutch of lances to stab the stars with.
Each of the quads elevated independently, traverse of about three or four degrees on it's own sub- platform, against a barbette and back- plate hardened to withstand planet- shaking shocks, anchored in suspension- film neutronium.
Wondrous stuff; it's hyperdense fluid nature made it the most perfect shock absorber in the universe, the only material substance that could take the recoil a heavy turbolaser battery kicked out.
Aldrem ran a hand over the pointing grip; with this, he could make countries disappear…it was fortunate for the planet underneath them that he was a stable individual. Whatever his file said.
It had happened, hadn't it? Star destroyer in the inner rim, permanent defence orbit around the sector capital. One of the gunners had fallen in love with a local, he had two-timed her, some said stood her up at the altar. She had waited, seemed over it, divisional officer hadn't caught it in time, she had simply climbed into the turret one day, pointed it down and made the cheat's home city into a green fireball.
Some of the newer ships had monitors installed to prevent someone in an unbalanced state of mind getting into the turret; apart from the fact that most people tended to be in an abnormal state of mind when shot at anyway, Black Prince had never received that particular upgrade.
Just as well, Aldrem thought, thinking about the team he was in charge of. Fendon's nitpicking precision had saved them from malfunction and flashback more than once, at the gun status monitor board, but he wasn't a man you could go and paint the town purple with.
Wasn't he a member of some obscure mid rim cult? Still busy vehemently denying the existence of things everyone else had forgotten about.
Number three was Areath Suluur, a dark- haired, warm brown- skinned man of indeterminable age- always armed, always coldly, fluidly precise on the job, and his service record was a pack of lies.
Whatever he had really been and whatever he had done he, on the other hand, was a good mate off the job, even if he did occasionally look longingly at stormtrooper armour, and react strangely to a few things. He was comms and sensors op.
When things went well, that was all the turret needed to serve it's guns. Unsurprisingly, it often didn't run that smoothly.
The other twelve turret crew were there to deal with problems as they came up, and were supposed to be capable of any running repair up to and including replacing a shocked- loose barrel in it's recoil cradle. Also capable of replacing the alpha team if they were the ones that got hit.
'Yeugh. This- it's almost whole.' Fendon held something up for inspection.
'Look, that console's sealed and hardened to stand vacuum and light flashback. You won't break it if you hose it down.'
Just then, the sky started to move around them. There was a small ball indicator, a space globe that showed two highlighted sections- their target- finder's current slice of sky, and their potential arc of fire. The ship pitched upwards.
'Manoeuvre jets function, and we have objects in arc.' Suluur said, looking past Aldrem at the globe. 'Control?'
'You call them- Fendon, don't do anything yet, but stand by to spin her up.' Aldrem told the power-tech.
'Fire Direction Control, this is Papa Four.' Suluur com'd to them. 'We have a line of fire to the station and the tender, IFF is still green, weapons are secure.'
'Papa Four- FDC. Weapons safe, repeat, weapons safe.'
'Zarri, what's going on?' Aldrem asked his friend in fire direction.
'We're pitching round to cover them, don't ask me why. Probably just Mirannon blowing off plasma.'
'Probably just getting ready to cover the tender if we are jumped, you mean.' Aldrem stated grimly.
'You could be right, Pel. I'll let you know if we get any real news.'
'Feel free to give us fake news, it passes the time. Papa Four out.' Suluur said, breaking link.
'So we are expecting trouble.' He said to the rest of the team.
'Stang, yes. Rebels think we're weak enough to jump, they'll send something to have a go at us.'
'Not surprising.' Fendon stated. 'The ship looks ready to come apart.'
'The guns are in perfect working order.' Aldrem stated. He was right, too. In the ambush that had landed them in dock, both sides had been heavily ionized, and after the initial clash the rebel cruiser had been shifting power and rerouting data to keep one system in working order - her hyperdrive. Black Prince had been doing the same- to protect her main battery.
'Maybe, but we look more like something that belongs to the rebel alliance.' Fendon declared.
'You joined after that, didn't you? That operation was a lot more fun to look back on than it was to go through, believe me.' Aldrem reminisced.
'Go on.' Suluur said, grinning.
'New Eguria sector, about, what, eight years back now? The sector group commander, it was Admiral
Demorak I think, went rogue, refused an order and defected to the Rebellion. Well, what of it already existed by then.
He was Republic navy from way back- real stuffed shirt. We pretended to join him. You're right, we do look like something out of the alliance fleet- we weren't as bad, then, but they still welcomed us with open arms. Poor suckers. Talk about a target rich environment.' Aldrem chuckled.
'I wonder how fast people die, or quit, in the rebellion. I wonder how far back their memories go.' Suluur pondered.
'You wonder if we could get away with it again, you mean.' Aldrem said. 'That's the main reason we can look like this; command knows we're loyal. We get the edgy, dangerous jobs, places the rebellion's won itself an advantage, situations another ship might not come back from, we get the job. We don't always bring all of this ship back.'
'You and Captain Lennart.' Fendon said.
'I've met him, which is more than I can say about the skippers of some of the ships I've been on.' Aldrem said, glossing over quite a lot of the details.
'So what happened to the rebels?' Fendon asked.
'They were still using a lot of old Clone Wars kit, we picked up two Recusant and a Victory kill, but so much of the superstructure got blown away, it was as easy to refit to Imperator- II as it was to fix up as was.'
'Most of the rebels are just a gang of pirates anyway, aren't they?' Fendon pointed out. 'Their big ships are rare- we see a lot more of them than we ought to. I mean, the initials of their proper name are A-R-R. What does that say about them?' He said contemptuously.
'Don't read too much into that. I mean, what would it make us, ninja?' Aldrem said.
Suluur laughed quietly and said nothing.
Lennart had requested the presence of the tender captain and the defence station commander. Both of them came, largely out of curiosity to see what sort of madhouse this mongrel ship was.
Their Lambda shuttles arrived at the same time as Jandras'. Because he was riding one of Black Prince's own, they gave him priority.
What he wanted to do was look around the pad, inspect the strange arrangements here. He had served with a Star Destroyer's fighter wing, and competently otherwise he wouldn't have been up for promotion, but not with an outfit like this.
He picked up his baggage, wandered out down the ramp, realized who his shuttle had been given priority over and decided to run away and hide before his career was irreparably damaged.
He should have known better; nothing on this ship was ever thrown away as irreparably damaged.
Two people came up to him; one male, mid height, solidly built and wearing a tool belt, the other female, neatly and precisely dressed- he didn't recognize either of the insignia, but he guessed he was enlisted, she was an officer.
Franjia had taken the captain's advice, and joined in the wake; she had a fair amount to drink, grief turned to anger, she had verbally savaged half the squadron, and the rest of her felt much better for it- her skull was still complaining.
She didn't remember if she had hit anybody or not, but her head felt bad enough to have spent most of the night headbutting stormtroopers; what Aron took for a ramrod up the spine was in this case her trying not to fall over.
'Welcome aboard, sir.' She said, extending a hand. He took it. He was short and broad shouldered, round faced and dark haired, she was taller than he was, hair so fair it was nearly white, oval faced, pale green eyes, looked like an icicle in a uniform. Physically fit, endurance rather than strength.
'Epsilon squadron?' He asked.
'Yes, sir- I'm Flight Lieutenant Rahandravell, Epsilon Five, this is Squadron Technical Master Sargeant Oregal.'
'Run that one by me again. Flight Lieutenant?'
'Sargeant Oregal, as this explanation is technical, you should deliver it.' Franjia smiled, as the squadron ground crew chief got to make the only form of attack he was officially allowed; unleashing a steaming mound of bullshit.
'As a carrier based strike wing operating off a non- carrier, we are technically Starfighter Force rather than navy.
Most of our personnel are in fact navy crossbadged to starfighter force, some of them are actually army hat jumpers but if this ship were ever to be officially classified as a carrier the naval personnel of the wing would revert to their permanent ranks whereas the army personnel would have to resign their permanent and have ratified their temporary commissions in the starfighter force in order to be allowed to serve with the navy.
The upshot of this is- congratulations, you've been demoted. Although nominally O-equal the administrative responsibilities consequent on the rank mean that a squadron leader acquires effective juniority under a naval lieutenant commander. Do you know where that falls in the starfighter force rank system, sir?'
He's starting to look like I feel, Franjia thought. She would have snapped and told the sergeant to shut up before he got to 'technically'. Either he has an unusually and exploitably high gibberish tolerance, he is very patient and forgiving- also exploitable- or his brain is so fried that all of this is rolling right off him.
Oregal continued. 'We're a wing, therefore we're commanded by a group captain, who has multiple wing commanders under him to command the tactical groups. A group captain is considered equal in rank to a colonel but junior to a naval captain, which is anomalous because naval captain and colonel are considered nominally equal, it comes from the fact that the army recognizes the equivalence of the senior lieutenant's rank and the starfighter force doesn't, which should put a group captain higher on the pay spine but you know how the navy are.
A squadron leader- you- commands a squadron except when such squadron is composed of heavy or multicrew craft in which case he commands a flight, normally the job of a flight lieutenant, and the squadron is commanded by a wing commander. Do you understand all that, sir?' he said, totally deadpan.
Aron had been letting it roll over him, but his brain wasn't that far gone yet. 'I don't need to, I have junior officers to do that for me.' Franjia and Oregal shared a look. Perhaps he wasn't totally hopeless.
'Tell me about something I care about. Over normal strength, over normal weight, right? So what have we got in the wing, group, whatever?'
'Two squadrons of TIE Avenger, except Alpha-squadron lead flight is an experimental group- commanded by an actual group captain, just this once.' Franjia told him, pointing across the bay.
'Triple wings, each wing splits again? Preproduction models, except GpCp Olleyri- Alpha One- liked them so much he refused to give them back. They're supposed to receive a D-codename, Devastator, Dominator, some such.'
'The Commander Air Group- don't you start-' that directed at Oregal- 'leads from the front? Good- but I don't recognize a lot of these things. They can't all be experimental.' Aron said.
'We do get a lot of flight testing work.' Oregal told him. 'Some of them are regional specialties we liked and picked up, the rest- I'm the senior crew chief, by the way. I don't fly them, I just fix them- are odds.'
'The rest?'
'Two Bomber and three Interceptor squadrons, one of the interceptor squadrons is Xt- light shield units. One other Starwing squadron- Delta, we're junior- Hunters, Gamma squadron, are a regional specialty, folding winged. Fighters- more or less. Mu and Nu squadrons are experimental, and the other side of the credchip. The D- birds are a winner; those- aren't.' Franjia told him.
'The Ravagers are escort fighters. See how all the wing hangs down below the body, and it looks like two eyeballs welded together? That's because they are. Everyone in the wing who can hold a hydrospanner has had a shot at trying to keep those flying, and we reckon it isn't worth the effort.' Oregal said. Franjia confirmed.
'Turret fighters. They do not work, and if our report has anything to do with it, they will not enter general service.'
'Those flying wing looking things?' Aron asked. They looked beautiful, sleek and chromic, almsot to god to be true in fact.
'Designed to fit a new, maybe rediscovered old, weapon; weapon works, spaceframe's junk.' Oregal confirmed.
'I know I'm here as a replacement.' Aron said, looking at Franjia's face freezing over again. She had thawed out a little talking shop, now she was back to icicle. 'What happened?'
'The people we lost,' she said slowly, 'make it feel much worse than the numbers say. Squadron Leader Ezirrn Tellick, Flight Officer Garm Inturii.'
'Flight Lieutenant, I transferred in from an Interceptor squadron. There were only two people in the unit whose name it was safe to let myself get to know, and one of them was me.' Aron said, brutally. It was usually safer than the alternative.
'Are you suggesting we should let ourselves get killed more often, just to stay in practise?' she was ready to savage him.
'Clearly, I've pushed one of your buttons.' Best way to cope with it, Jandras thought, just plough on regardless. 'Those numbers. What do they say about the other side?'
'Two rebel half squadrons, X escorting Y wings, we destroyed four X and a Y, the rest ran, four damaged enough to claim.'
'Not bad- we seem to have got off on the wrong foot, Flight Lieutenant.' He started to say.
'The rebel bombers ripple- fired their antiship torpedo loads at us to give themselves time to flee to hyperspeed. That's how we lost Squadron Leader Tellick. We miss him, and I mean to avenge him. I know all about the two graves business, and I don't greatly care. Come on, I'll introduce you to the squadron.' Franjia stated.
'One thing. Oregal.' Aron turned to the sergeant.
'Yes, sir?'
'How do you remember all of that bureaucro-crap?'
'I'm studying to put myself through law school, Sir. Know your enemy and all that.'
'Kitrich? Help.' The young probationary engineer appealed to his room-mate. Mirannon had most of his senior officers and artificers, and himself, working non- stop; and had let the rest know that whether or not they ever got to be senior depended a lot on how hard they drove themselves now.
Junior officers he wasn't worrying about, considering them unlikely to pull their weight in the purely technical work underway.
'What is it?'
'Have you stopped laughing about me getting into trouble yet?'
'What's the problem?'
'I got told to write a report on the ship's hyperdrive- and I'm lost. I mean, this makes no sense.' He had three large datapad- textbooks sitting open on their shared desk.
'Right now, all I know is that I don't want to go near one ever, ever again.'
'A hyperdrive or the exec?'
'Both. I mean…this is crazy. It doesn't work. It can't work. It can't work. According to this, the light barrier is impossible to cross.' He pointed to one of the textbooks. 'This calls it a…hypersymmetric transposition? As if we somehow change places with something on the other side of the light barrier? Which this,' pointing at one of the other datapads, 'calls a dead theory, proven nonsense- but this, the actual handbook-' he banged his head off the desk.
'Hyperdrive motivator, what does that mean? It motivates hyperspace, like makes it do circuit training until it gets tired and agrees to let us in? Time and energy running backwards, causality normalisation fields- when there is no normal referential frame anyway, and we depend on abnormal causality to get there?' He wailed, from the forehead-on-desk position. 'I give up. It's a black box with a 'go' button on it.'
'If it didn't make your head hurt, it wouldn't be worth working out.' Kitrich said, heartlessly, then he recovered a slight shred of mercy. 'Are you really baffled?'
'Yes?'
'Look…start with something you understand. Work with that, and work outwards from it.'
'I thought I understood power converters. Converter controls electron standing wave that intercepts and is energised by electromagnetic activity, converts low energy radiation like heat to usable power by draining back energy from activated electrons- regenerative heating, the energy gets dumped back in the reactor. It's the ship's heat sink system.' He opened a workbook.
'T-E series, and most of a hypermatter reaction's product interacts weakly or not at all, and the core runs off five stage T-N series, process to control a process to control a process to control…how does the other side do it? How does a bunch of failed politicians and art school dropouts run ships dangerous enough that we have to be here trying to stop them?'
'They treat their tech as black boxes with 'go' buttons on.'
The tender and station commanders were escorted to the ready room beneath the bridge. The ship's scarred appearance was only skin deep; there were work crews everywhere- including a group of stormtroopers levering something into place under the direction of a small team of engineering enlisted.
The tender commander understood more of what was going on, and he was grudgingly impressed- still intended to shout at the captain for removing the tender's people and keeping their tools.
All but one of Black Prince's command team were there and waiting; Lennart, Dordd, gunnery officer, sensors and systems officer, navigator- the missing man was Mirannon, who was far too busy.
The bulk of the ready room was taken up with the main display table and the ring of seats around it- an arrangement the Rebels had apparently copied for their own starships. At the moment it was showing a display of the surrounding space.
'Junior Captain, Port Commander.' Lennart greeted them, emphasizing the fact that he ranked them and commanded a combat unit. Otherwise, they might not have believed that he was an Imperial naval officer.
'Two things; one of more interest to my people than to our guests. With effect from 1200 Coruscant Time today, Commander Delvran Dordd is promoted to Captain and appointed to command Arrogant- class Star Destroyer Dynamic.'
They cheered him, grouped around him, slapped him on the back, congratulated him. It was never an executive officer's job to be popular, and indeed he was not, but he was professional.
'Thank you.' He told them all, even the two visitors who had congratulated him with icy politeness. 'I'm remaining in my old job in an acting capacity for the moment, because we have another problem I want to see through.'
If it's getting this rustbucket to look like a proper warship, Dynamic's going to be waiting a long time, the station commander thought. It was depressing- worse, it was demoralising having this thing broken down and hanging in space near his people. What had happened to the Navy's standards?
'Junior Captain- Fokatha, isn't it? I never knew life on board a tender could be so interesting. Rebel spies and everything.' Lennart hand- signalled to one of the stormtrooper escort, who called their chief witness for the persecution. Omega-17-Blue-Aleph 3 walked into the ready room.
Perhaps one in ten of the stormtroopers in the 721st Legion was either a more recent clone or an actual veteran of the Grand Army of the Republic. Somewhere around one in thirty was female.
OB173 was both, and she had been designed for perfection. Dordd tried not to stare, and gave up. It wasn't just the way she walked, the obviously powerfully athletic frame, yet lithe and fluidly elegant; she could have stepped onto any catwalk in the Core, stormtrooper armour and all, and brought the house down.
She had her helmet hooked on her belt, showing off a long flowing crown of red- gold hair, a hawk face and bright, sharp star- blue eyes. Every male eye in the room locked on to her- except the captain's. He was watching her hands and her weapons.
Dordd was entranced. She's magnificent, he was thinking, a divine being, a snow-clad angel of death.
'Dockside security became suspicious of this man.' She said- glorious, glorious voice- slotting a datachip into the display. It was a split image of the worker, his personnel record. 'He was abducted from your ship, Junior Captain, and questioned.'
'Impossible! My security-'
'Is porous. They suspected nothing, before, during or after. He confessed to being a rebel operative. I have the details of that also, if you require them to convince you.' She was definite, thoroughly in control of herself, unquestionable. Which was exactly the effect she wanted to have, of course.
'Did you do the interrogation?' the station commander asked. He sounded ready to volunteer for one himself.
'I'm qualified.' She stated, simply. 'Others are more so, and it would have been unjust to deprive them of the chance to put their talents to use. He broke thoroughly, we have confidence in our conclusions.'
'Those conclusions being that the Alliance knows we're here. Thank you, trooper, you can go.' Before my acting exec drowns in a puddle of his own drool, Lennart didn't add. She saluted and glided out. Most of them watched her go.
'Gentlemen; tactical planning time.' Captain Lennart had to flare the holoimage- a maximum intensity pulse of light- to get their attention. 'What, if anything, will the rebels try to do to us, and how do we defend and counterattack?'
'Do you have any more like her?' the tender captain, mind still not with them, asked.
'It, people; a Grand Army clone template, limited edition, liaison communications and public relations. The effect she had on you, she was supposed to have on early imperial journalists. Can you concentrate on something other than thinking about seducing one of my stormtroopers?'
'Usual worst case scenario, Captain?' Commandwe Wathavrah- "guns"- asked. He had a peculiar mottled look about face and hands, could have been near-human, in fact had been sprayed with cryogen from a damaged laser cannon early in his career.
'Yes, no point worrying about that. Most probable case?'
'What's the worst case?' the defence station commander asked.
'The rebels put two and two together, realise it's us, decide to wipe out a lot of scores and send a battle group with enough collective firepower to make even the Executor nervous.' The navigator, Commander Brenn, fielded the question. He would have been the captain's first choice to replace Dordd as exec.
'We know exactly what to do about it; we run. Most probable, now…that depends a lot on the competence of the rebels.'
'Hmph.' The gunnery officer expressed contempt for the rebels' intelligence. 'Even disabled, a destroyer still takes a lot of putting down, they'll have to send something hefty.'
'Have to risk it? I don't think so.' Brenn stated. 'The only time they've ever been able to capture a Star Destroyer is when the legion aren't aboard, ideally none of the crew either. Not a serious objective. Nicking the Sahallare, though, that would appeal. Neutralise the Golan, demolish us, capture the tender.
Dreadnaught- class cruisers; the last I heard, the rebels were starting to automate them and use the crew space for assault troops.'
'One of those old junkers against a StarGun? Even the Rebellion isn't usually that stupid.' Dordd replied.
'Starfighter support. Everything they have with an ion cannon, disable the station and the tender, probably those fancy ion pulse warheads as well. Dreadnought jumps in, finishes the station, fighters land and rearm with heavy demolition warheads, bombs and rockets, finish off the crippled star destroyer while the dread boards and captures the tender.
Three phase strike, true, but all they really risk is an old junker and a few thousand meatheads.' Brenn replied.
'What's the system defence force going to be doing? Standing by and cheering?' the gunnery officer queried. 'Ghorn II under us has a pair of V-150s, there's a Lancer and a detachment of IPV's, and the garrison TIE wings.'
'So the rebels put commando teams in, covert insertion by tramp freighter ahead of the main op, seize the V-150s and use them against us, the rebel heavy fighters slaughter the garrison TIEs, and Lancers are dead meat against anything bigger than a starfighter. System defence isn't going to be much more than a speed bump to a competent rebel group.'
'Well, thank you very much.' The defence platform commander objected.
'Your platform is the only system asset the rebels need fear.' Lennart took control of the discussion. 'Brenn, your plan has them using fighters, spec ops teams, an expendable old ship and troops. I'm not convinced they have that much disposable fighter strength- but the V-150 idea is a nasty one. Guns?'
'Same old rebel idea; harder they hit us, further they knock us off balance, more chance they have of getting back whatever they commit. Victory or Mon Cal, fighter first wave then a combat drop, with us between them and the planet, use us as an ion shield. They'll try to blow the tender if they can't capture it.'
'Point. Delvran?'
'Insystem spies. The rebels probably do have someone on the planet, it's a fleet transfer point after all. They'll see the preparations we make. Otherwise- send down stormtroopers to secure the ion cannon, half our fighters are hyper capable- use them as a reaction force, have them jump out now, jump in on signal to counterstrike the rebels.'
'So far. I don't see the rebels risking a major force unit- there'll be one, but it'll be distant support, outsystem waiting to hyper in. Our fighters clear the rebel fighters, Sahallare moves to shelter behind the Golan, we fight a conventional engagement in high orbital space with ion support to cripple and take the rebel strike ship.' Lennart decided.
'Captain!' the platform commander protested. 'Your ship's in no fit state-'
'It looks that way.' Captain Lennart smiled. 'We have full firepower, fighter and ground ops, we're six hours away from shield function, ten from basic ion drive and fifteen from hyper. The rebels can't plan and organise faster than we can come back on line, not with enough to be a serious threat. A half planned scratch group could be here now, but-'
There was a loud beep. 'Captain, this is sensor watch. Hyperstate bow shocks, multiple small craft. Incoming rebel fighters.'
