When all the to-ing and fro-ing was done, there were four ships hanging in space next to the Sahallare: a destroyer and two frigates.

The Raduvej and the Fulgur fast frigate, named Caderath in Old Republic service and now provisionally renamed Grey Princess, hung beside the destroyer. The Lancer, fore-structure ravaged by rocket fire, was next to the tender. The destroyer herself was rolled inverted, facing the planet.

There had been traffic: a Star Galleon under Strike Cruiser escort, to drop off the parts and fittings the tender needed to recondition the Raduvej, and collect the prisoners. The escort cruiser had not been at all happy about their newest kill splash - as usual, the crew drew lots to see who got the priviledge of painting it on.

The Galleon had also carried fighter replacements, enough to rebuild the existing units to strength and replace the squadrons they had given up on.

The two flight test squadrons had been badly mauled by the B-wings. That was hardly believable. There were some 'junior aeronaut' type fighters so light and so cheap they could be purchased mail order - for instance, the Zerflade Dart that made an embarrassingly large portion of Aron's score. Even they could usually beat B-wings. It was the group captain's decision, but the Captain's ultimate responsibility; Olleyri met with Lennart to discuss it.

'The numbers, I already know,' Lennart told him, straight away. 'Reasons and alternatives, I want.'

'They're not standard, and there's a good reason for that. They're fungus. I like having the experimentals around; they give us room to improvise, a doctrinal flexibility that matters more than having a crap fighter squadron. We need to keep some of them.'

Lennart agreed, broadly. Starfighter Force had a different set of mynocks in its helmet anyway. 'Which do we do without?'

'You mean, save the pilots from?' Olleyri pointed out. 'The Marauders are less worthless, but that's just the gun. A fashion designer built those things, not a flight engineer, kriffing flying wings. The Ravagers might just be the worst kitbash I've ever seen.' He thought about it.
'On balance, we lose the Marauders. Call the gun a success, the spaceframe a joke, test complete. The Ravagers could work, with a gun that didn't take up half the total mass of the TIE, and they might make something of themselves in antiship.'

That was how elements of the fighter wing found themselves lined up on the main landing dock, mostly with sidearms. 'Testing to destruction' the notification had called it. Mirannon had been asked very nicely, and had agreed to raise the bay shields for the occasion. Epsilon were invited.

'Are we really about to do what I think we are?' Aron asked Franjia. He still resented having to look up to her, but that was daft. Prejudice usually was, especially reverse prejudice. Off duty, she kept herself to herself, coldly formal and more than a little distant; in a cockpit, even a simulated one, they worked well together.

'We took losses to numerically superior fighter opposition, an antifighter escort and a light carrier- and gave better than we got.' His score was now twenty-seven, hers thirty-four.

Five of the fighters had gone, but only two of the pilots. 'They were taken down by B-wings; it doesn't get more embarrassing.' There was already joking, shoving - one pilot nearly had his face pushed through the pressure screen. Everyone there had at least their regulation sidearm; some had two, a carbine or a rifle. There was a company or so of stormtroopers watching; they already looked amused.

The leader of the rout was a man in his undershirt and purple silk shorts, spiky hair, an expression that had given up grip on sanity, and a heavy blaster pistol in one hand, a stein in the other. He looked up at the ceiling and shouted 'Pull!'

Somebody called back 'Which end?' - but the ceiling drop chutes released a Marauder. At least, the stripped down remains of one. Most of its jets gone, it was remote flown in a slow spiral down the bay, and Nu squadron's survivors and ground crew opened up on it, whooping and blasting for all they were worth.

'They must really hate those things,' Franjia said, joining in - so did everybody else.

Aron shot at it as well, but he wasn't as good, couldn't pick out his shots from the hail of fire going in to it. 'Why are they so bad?' he asked her.

'Because those are so good.' She pointed - and had to shout over the crackle of massed blaster fire - at the Defenders, screened from this behind their layers of shelding. 'They're beautiful, but they're the end of the line. Sienar know they'll never be able to top that, so they're reaching; scrambling around for some way, any way, to take the TIE series forward. They've come up with a lot of bad ideas trying - count yourself lucky you missed the Intruder fiasco.' She winced, thinking about it. External missile racks, instant firepower but prone to cook off for as near nothing as made no difference. Even the solar wind could touch them off, the survivors had said.
'Our test flight are due to return to Sienar for redesign to get the cost down; another test with a new model in two, three years perhaps. Until then, and maybe ever, that's the largest unit of Defenders you'll see in one place at one time.'

'How much?' Aron asked, prepared for an absurdly big number.

'Three hundred and eighty thou?'

'Eep…'

'Worth it, though. The Marauders, we're actually adding value to by reducing them to scrap.'

Both of them turned back to fire on the second hull being dropped down the chute. The shooting was wild, wild; from pilots, on their own two feet, what could you expect? The stormtroops- there to keep order if the flyboys started blasting each other, deliberately or more likely by accident - were now expressing as much contempt as silent, fixed masks could.

'You think you could do better, eh?' the purple shorts - Nu One - turned and shouted at the stormtroopers - still waving his blaster. The rest of Nu quickly dogpiled on him, before the stormtroopers could shoot him. He was in no real danger; most of them had done civil support duty, they could recognise a drunken idiot when they saw one.

An order was passed over the comnet; one of the squads formed up, marched to the edge of the bay, took aim and began controlled, timed fire - placed shots as rapidly as they could be aimed.

Flight control made it harder for them, spinning and twisting the Marauder hull, but it didn't help. There were maybe seventy, eighty pilots there, hitting as often as the eight-troopers-plus-sargeant.

A further order came down, from ship command this time; play up to it, make a bit of a show.

'If they could move like that without being stripped down, we wouldn't need to junk them.' Nu One - a bit the worse for wear after having what was left of his squadron sit on him - said.

'Are you all right?' Aron asked him.

'Ah, the glory boy. The hero of the hour.' Someone sensible had taken his gun away, but he was still holding the beer.

'What?'

'You wander in, straight to command a cracked squadron, while the rest of us slog our guts out in junk like that?' He reeled, glaring at Aron. 'Big interceptor bomber pilot.' He was balancing on the balls of his feet, spoiling for trouble.

'Garram, you're drunk.' Franjia stepped between them, trying to calm them down. He pushed her out of the way to get at Aron; Franjia stumbled back. Most pilots were arrogant enough to believe themselves great fighters in any environment, air, space, land, or pub, she was well aware she wasn't. Basic and passable, no more.

One of the stormtroopers saw it; stepped over to intervene. Three blindingly fast, white-handed touches to pressure points, and Nu One collapsed. The trooper hoisted the limp, pissed squadron commander over- her?- shoulder. The bulged chestplate was a glaring giveaway. Franjia had never taken notice of that before.

'Follow me.' Franjia told the trooper, headed for one of the maintenance storage bays on the side of the hangar.

OB173 dropped the drunk squadron leader at one of the benches, propped him up, Franjia planted two beers in front of him.
'Not many women in the Emperor's service.' The Flight Lieutenant said to Aleph-3.

'I don't count; I was born to it.' Aleph-3 said. 'You surprise me, though.'

'Oh, the Empire recruits women.' Franjia sat down at the bench herself, took one of the beers. 'For the donkey work. Seventy-thirty on some worlds, you know that? Out on the Rim. Then the pyramid gets pretty sharp, pretty fast. O-3, there are maybe one in twenty left. O-6, is it closer to one in a hundred or one in a thousand? At some point in there, as you struggle through the incomprehension, malice, blatant sexism, being treated as a sex object, you realise that these people do not want you to fight for them. Or for yourself.'

'At least,' Aleph-3 said, 'you are not simply an object.'

'A standard flight suit's almost as anonymous - and half the time, I don't think they know what they expect of us.' Most of the time, the stormtrooper thought, she doesn't know what she expects of herself, which won't be helping.

'It should be 'we'. Even under arms for the Emperor, we're still a separate entity, they think of as 'other'. Lust, fear, jealousy, hate, confusion - and the most infuriating are the ones who nearly understand.' Aleph 3 said, with one specific individual in mind.

'I'm used to that for other reasons, but there's nothing else I could, or would, do. However awkward it is, I'm here.'

'However awkward…do you know what our adjutant told me? He lost a lot of peripheral nerve function, he's grounded - he said we were both physically unfit for higher command.' She had wanted to strangle Yrd, at the time.

Aleph 3 decided to go out on a limb. 'From what I've seen of the Empire's high command, that could have been a compliment.'

'Is there a red flag flying?' Franjia asked.

'No, why?'

'An old pilot tradition - back before repulsors, even. Atrisian Starfighter Corps, I think - not every day, but some, the red flag would be hoisted in the mess hall. It meant it was free speech time; you could say whatever you liked, even - especially - about the government, the people in charge. Blow off pressure, bitch to your heart's content.'

'Stormtrooper loyalty is - rightly - taken for granted; we are the trustees of the Empire, we keep the faith. We do not have to like or respect the people we're keeping it for. This ship is far better than most; I've served a good many idiots in my time.' Aleph-3 said.

'I know. I should save it for an assignment I really hate. But there are times…just when you think you've found a hole in the system, some way, some one, you can be woman and soldier both with, reality comes and takes it away from you.'

Aleph 3 wanted to keep talking, but she sensed something coming. 'Trouble.'

'What,' there was an enraged bellow, 'is going on here?' The bronze-faced exec, Anode Head to the engineering team, was shouting at the pilots; the stormtroopers snapped to attention, the pilots made some approximate pretense of it.

'Conduct unbecoming; unauthorised discharge of weapons; drunk and disorderly; unlawful assembly; destruction of Imperial property.' His voice rose almost to a scream at that point. 'Whose idea was this? Stormtroopers - arrest these -'

'Belay that.' A loud voice cut across the exec- Engineer-Commander Mirannon. He was more cleanly shaved than usual, and what of his face was visible was annoyed.

The pilots and troopers, and every spacer who was within earshot, listened. This was going to be fun.

'Chief Engineer.' Mirhak-Ghulej acknowledged him. 'Do you have something to do with this?'

'Somebody with a few grams of sense had better. Do you realise how absurdly serious a charge that is, to arrest half the wing on?'

'It is the charge that fits.' They were almost nose to nose, Mirannon more than half again Mirhak-Ghulej's bodyweight. 'It is the charge they lay themselves open to by their conduct.'

'Bantha poodoo.'

'I stand above you in the chain of command, Chief Engineer; you have no authority to talk to me like that.'

'You're junior in time-in-grade, and also apparently a halfwit. Maybe forty percent at best. Your writ doesn't stretch this far.'

'My responsibility is the internal discipline and economy of this ship. This is undisciplined, uneconomical, and clearly my duty to stop and punish.' The exec said, sounding as if he was quoting.

'I'd be more confident in that if it wasn't also your only apparent pleasure.' Mirannon snapped back at him. 'Are you so totally devoid of judgement that you don't understand why this is happening?'

'Meaningless.' Mirhak-Ghulej dismissed the stress, the tension, the fear of combat in one word. 'No reason for violating regulations is good enough, attempting to rationalise it an offence in itself.'

'Apart from the fact that you're wrong, DIP is a Category One offence, with a severe penalty.' Mirannon reminded him.

'The Empire has the right to execute those it feels has displeased it.' Mirhak-Ghulej said.

'Who here feels less comfortable about serving the Empire now than they did before our exec opened his mouth? Show of hands.' Mirannon asked the crowd.

Most of the pilots put their hands up; almost all the crew; Aleph 3 glared at them, and even half the Stormtroopers had their hand up - the one they weren't holding their blaster carbine with.

'There, congratulations, you've just won yourself a spot on your own death list as a - hypothetical - Alliance agent-provocateur. If you'd bothered to do your paperwork before coming down to flex your warped ego, you would have known that this is unconventional - but fully authorised. By myself, by Group Captain Olleyri, and by Captain Lennart. Those things are no longer Imperial property - they're imperial junk, being disposed of destructively in accordance with security regulations as befits their, former, classified status.'

Mirannon did a little looming of his own. 'The only person here, Exec, still staring down the maw of justice, is you. It would be wise for you to go away, before I have to start taking you seriously.'

'Are you interfering with the enforcement of the laws of the empire?' the frozen-faced exec tried to reassert himself.

'Angling for a confession to a cat 2 offence? I don't think so. What I am doing is protecting the law by preventing it being enforced frivolously and incompetently. I'd invite you to stay to the roast we're about to have, but I don't think you'd be welcome, and frankly, keep pushing it and you're more likely to be on the menu.'

'What about all the other charges?' Mirhak-Ghulej snarled.

'I don't support them. The disciplinary system on this ship is your responsibility; but all the others belong to me.' Mirannon growled back at him. 'I haven't had the chance to do any really creative plumbing in months - so go on. Annoy me.'

Aleph-3 knew exactly what he meant by 'creative plumbing'; she had been standing next to him when he had reduced a company of Alliance marines and a force user to loose carbon with a relative-inertial field.

Manipulating it to compensate for a non-existent acceleration had left them hurtling through the air at twenty-four hundred 'g', all a Procurator was capable of, and between that and air resistance - she had never seen an indoor meteor shower before, and profoundly hoped never to do so again.

The exec stalked out, furious - but also wary. The beer continued to flow and the remains of the Marauders were swept up by tractor beam, compressed into a bundle which, still glowing hot from blaster fire, was dumped on the hangar bay floor. Sparks scattered off it, the pilots jumped back, there was a brief fire extinguisher fight - the pilots complaining they couldn't tell when the foam hit a stormtrooper, the troopers treating that with the doubt it deserved - and the lumps of meat on sticks were passed round, to heat over the molten wreckage. It took some time for the mood to reassert itself, though.

Lennart was stuck in his office, sifting through personnel files. Intermittently he was looking up at, and cursing, the Fulgur.

'You sent for me, skipper?' Brenn.

'Come in, come in.' Lennart waved him to a chair. 'You heard about the incident in the flight bay?'

'I heard. I think the entire ship did. Halfwit.'

'He tried to exert his authority, and blew it. Spectacularly. When I told him he was in danger from the crew, I didn't think it was going to be Mirannon.' Lennart rubbed a hand over his forehead. 'That's problem number one. This is problem number two.'
He called up the sector map, first level; the twenty-seven worlds of the sector that were worthy of the notice of the galaxy, and the standard routes between them.

'So far so normal, two indigenous alien species, one of doubtful loyalty, usual scatter of industrials. Give me a clue.' Brenn said; apart from the usual half-awake Republic surveys, there didn't seem to be much wrong, standard web pattern.

'Not fair, I suppose - upper right middle.' Lennart brought up the second level map, the worlds that featured in the sector's head count but were unlikely to impinge on the galaxy at large, the other two hundred and fifty-four. One of them had a very interesting name: Ord Corban.

Brenn got it straight away. 'How in the name of the force does an Old Republic fleet depot system, with enough vintage military equipment to equip an Alliance theatre group - and it probably has - get classified as a minor world?'

'That would be problem number three.' Lennart said. 'I had Chief Cormall do some digging. One of Shandon's signal-interpreters, and a pretty capable slicer. I have his report, but you would be better meeting him - so you know who to blame if half the ship's ready fund goes missing.'

The office door opened, and a prematurely grey-haired, round faced man, apparently impeccably uniformed, came in.

'Frevath, some people are built to wear a uniform, and some aren't. Lose the jacket.' Lennart, who belonged in the first category but insisted on dressing as if he didn't, said.

The shocked-looking chief petty officer did, searched around for a place to put it, giving Brenn a good view of the 'Boba Fett and the Assassin Droids - On Tour Deaf or Alive' T-shirt he was wearing under his uniform.

'There.' Lennart said. 'That looks more like a man with the illegal skills to crack into a high security datafortress.'

'Sir, don't tell my divisional officer, he'll - what am I saying? You're the Captain.'

'Not that you would guess it from appearances.' Brenn said. Lennart nodded to him to carry on, ignoring Frevath Cormall's suppressed chuckle. 'Where did you look, and what did you find?'

'Well, sir…how likely are you to be able to successfully negotiate an asteroid field?'

'Don't be daft,' the experienced navigator said, 'there's no way you can predict - oh. Actuarial data.'

'Spot on, Sir. I thought, well, if we do suspect tampering with the facts, we need to establish a baseline, work out what's actually going on so we can tell who's spinning what lies to whom. The sector insurers are usually a pretty good place to start for firm info.'

'And?' Brenn asked.

'Um- Sir, am I going to get into trouble over this?' Cormall asked Lennart.

'If you do, the rest of the ship won't be far behind you. Tell it all.' Lennart forced himself to say, suddenly worried.

'Sir, this sector's a much more dangerous place than Sector Group is admitting it is. With the records of losses and hijackings I've been able to put together, they've been under-representing Alliance, smuggler, pirate, all sorts of criminal activity by upwards of a hundred and fifteen percent, probably close to a hundred and sixty.' Cormall said.

'So we have at least one big lie from the hierarchy. The reason we're rolled this way is so our main guns can cover the planetary ion cannon.' Lennart revealed. 'Just in case they know that we've worked it out. Carry on.'

'Ord Corban got downgraded actually during the clone wars. The fleet based out of it did something crazy, something scandalous that the Republic hushed up and buried under very heavy security.'

'Would that be the hundred and eighteenth fleet, at all?' Lennart spoke from sudden intuition, with a shiver down his spine, speaking slowly and coldly.

They noticed. Cormall hardly had to say yes.

'Um, Captain, you're scaring me now-'

'Small bloody wonder, if what I think happened actually did. I begin to understand how the scam could work. Say on.'

'Well, I looked at some of the trade records, and there's a lot more top quality military hardware floating around the sector than local manufacture or known import accounts for.'

Brenn was not in the mood for an economics lecture, and Cormall noticed. 'So - to cut a long story short, the local bosses started selling bits off very early, and kept the business up under cover of the Republic security blanket. People - regimes - have come and gone, the families behind the scheme have stayed the same.'

'Actual collusion with the Rebels?' Brenn asked.

'Ah, now there the trail gets vague. What I reckon, Sir, is no; but the Alliance have done a lot of false trail work to make it look more like treason than graft and corruption.' Cormall said.

'Which is what, by now-' Lennart stopped himself. 'Chief Petty Officer, just how deeply do you want to be involved in this?'

'How deep does it get, Sir?' the slicer said, mainly to give himself time to think.

'Depends how far out into the murk you want to wade. They don't know, or at least if they do they are the boldest bunch of bandits I have ever even heard of. For that matter, neither do I, really, and I'm far from certain I want to.' Lennart said.

'So what's the worst case scenario?' Brenn, expecting something pretty horrific, asked.

'We find ourselves on the same hit list as the rebel "Heroes" of Yavin, at first estimate. If it goes back to the Hundred and Eighteenth Republic Fleet, even if it wasn't involved directly, that could involve digging into just how the Republic managed to turn into the Empire.

Not a subject a sane man with healthy survival instincts wants to learn too much about.' Lennart said, grimly, imagining telekinetic fingers digging into his throat.

'Captain, I think we want to keep a very healthy separation between problems two and three.' Brenn suggested.

'Still leaves us standing on a lava dome and throwing thermal detonators at each other. The scam-artists in the sector government must have some idea, but the Rebels can't know, otherwise they would be following it up, they'd realise there's far more political treasure on that planet than there is materiel.'

'All right, Sir, count me in.' Cormall decided, not sure why.

'Good. Wait here.' He went out to the com gallery off the bridge, sent a ship-wide alert; 'Commander Mirannon to the Captain's office.'

There were two reasons he could be summoned to the captain's office, and the big engineer had a case for either, or both; this was clearly another problem entirely. He realised as soon as he arrived.

'Good, you're here, I'll scream at you about the flight deck business later, I think we've just blundered into a world of hurt.'

'Typical.' Mirannon declared. 'Not content with my services, you go out and find more trouble for yourself - what is it, skipper?'

'We were tracking down how the rebels get hold of their ships, and we found it was from the fallout of an old scandal it would be unsafe verging on suicidal to inquire into.'

'Suggestion; don't inquire into it. Chase the ships, not the original screwup.' Mirannon had a very good idea what the problem was, Brenn could tell, and didn't want a better one.

'That's the consensus?' Lennart asked.

'You command an Imperator- class destroyer and you're asking for consensus? That's just how abnormal this business is?' Brenn asked, almost amazed.

'Yes.' Captain Lennart answered.

'I think I'd like to find out. I'd like to know. But if you're serious about the hit list as well...'

'At this point, believe me, I desperately want not to know. We deal with the problem at hand, Rebellion and Empire, right? Digging up the wars of the past - even if we were actually in them - is a step too far.'

'What do I do?' Cormall asked.

'Follow the trail forward, not back.' Lennart ordered. 'Gather data on anything and everything except the Republic security clampdown. True details for loss locations, cargoes taken, firms and worlds hit harder than others - find out, for first, if they have a line into Iushnevan Port Authority.' That was the sector capital.

Cormall saluted, picked up his uniform jacket and left, head buzzing with questions. He probably would have the sense not to chase too many of them.

'I'll call the rest of the command team, talk through the practicalities of the situation. First things first - Nav.' He called up the image of the Fulgur again. 'Life has no sense of timing.'

'No.' Brenn said, straight away.

'Thank you. Why?'

'If you make the offer and I turn it down, it's a major black mark on my record. If I accept, well, I'm probably not literally indispensable, but-'

'Close enough, especially at a time like this.' Lennart admitted.

'It's possible the rebs are blackmailing the Sector governor.' Mirannon pointed out. 'If this big dark secret gets out on his watch, what the Empire would do to him would be vastly worse than anything the rebellion could. Neither of them need know exactly what all the trouble is about.'

'So we have a rebel supply base, field manufacturing facilities and all, effectively protected by the Imperial Starfleet. Can you get Motivator Five back? I'd like to return to yesterday and do today over again, completely differently,' Brenn suggested.

'Rank has its privileges - me first.' Lennart said. Out to the com systems gallery again, to arrange for a general meeting of the command team.

They gathered in the ready room; Lennart, Mirannon, Brenn were there first, generating a little field of desperate seriousness and gloom. Wathavrah and Rythanor, Guns and Sensors, next in, followed by Olleyri and, unusually, High Colonel QAG-111. The commander of the ship's Stormtrooper legion looked less frozen-faced and metallic than the Exec, who sat at the foot of the table, as far away from Mirannon as he could.

'Gentlemen, all of our minor problems have just been reduced in size. We now have a major problem to deal with.' Lennart began, and motioned to Brenn to continue.

'Data from other arms of the Imperial service indicates that this sector is barely under Imperial control. The sector group's figures for Rebel activity are so wide of the mark as to be unbelievable, verging on mendacious.'

'Ah, I thought so.' Shandon Rythanor said. 'First line warships in first rate condition. Wouldn't be the first time they've had more than we suspect - wait. You're saying Sector Group are lying?'

'Open, bare-faced lies.' Lennart confirmed.

'Then what are we waiting for? We have some hyper capability, right? Straight to the capital, bombard them before they realise that we know, and present the evidence afterward.' Wathavrah suggested.

'Right, I'll go paint phoenix symbols on the side of the bridge tower, then.' Mirannon said, scornfully. 'It gets worse.'

'The reason they have been able to get away with it, is that the rebs are operating within the, metaphorical, blast radius of a political unexploded bomb.' Brenn said.

'Translate, for whose of us who aren't trying to learn doubletalk?' Wathavrah asked.

'The Dubbel people could probably sue you for defamation…' Lennart suggested, deadpan. 'There's a political threat to the Empire. The rebels don't understand anything about it, except that it exists. They are using it to blackmail the Sector Group into permitting them to present a military threat. It's working because the Sector Group expect to find themselves on Darth Vader's appointments list if it gets out.'

'The Alliance are using a political weapon, which they don't understand but Imperial Security does, to attack the Sector Group with?' Wathavrah tried to put it together. 'If they don't know what the big secret is - how?'

'Because they expect to be able to rely on mugs like us to do their investigative dirty work for them.' Rythanor suggested. 'Stop me if I'm wrong, Captain, but you've been very vague - is that why?'

'Yes. Whatever it is - we don't need to know. If we investigated, even with absolute integrity and discretion, there would still be enough fallout from it to give aid and comfort to the enemy. It's a secret the empire wants kept. Question is, how do we deal with the military problem, without exposing the political?'

'What is the military problem?' Olleyri asked. He was still slightly hung over.

The image of Ord Corban came up.

'I hate to say this,' Rythanor said, 'but I agree with Guns for once. Alpha strike.'

'Might not be the worst option - but what do we do about the turncoats inside Sector Group command?' Mirannon asked.

'Commander Mirhak-Ghulej.' The first time he had been spoken to. 'What does the book say you are supposed to do, if you catch your superior officer or officers in the act of betraying the Empire?'

The exec's response was entirely mechanical. 'Report them to their superiors.' Lennart wondered what he would find in his in-box about the flight deck incident.

'That will constitute plan A, we'll do it in any case. I want operation plans prepared for; a BDZ-level strike on Ord Corban, with and without fighting our way through a defending fleet; a drop assault on Ord Corban, objective personnel; a drop assault with bombardment support on Sector Group headquarters. Mirhak-Ghulej, wait outside, QAG111, wait here, the rest of you, dismissed.'

They left, in varying degrees of bafflement; Lennart faced round to the helmeted High Colonel.
'Whatever it is, Captain Lennart?' The trooper's voice was ice cold.

'I can guess. In fact, I could put together a very convincing theory. You probably could too.' He had to be a veteran. 'I trust my officers' discretion and loyalty enough to at least tell them that there is a problem; they won't go looking for evidence, nor will you, nor will I.'

'So what do you need me for?' The senior stormtrooper asked.

'First of all - general point of procedure. The overwhelming majority of local Imperials involved in this are overwhelmingly likely to be dupes rather than traitors. When I do send you in, and I don't know where or when, shoot to stun and disable. Then identify the punishably guilty, and shoot them without interrogation.' Lennart ordered.

'You don't want to know. Acknowledged. Second?'

'Soothe my conscience. I do have a theory - if it's right, I want to be at least reasonably certain that the reason of state behind it was at least approximately just. Think of it as a helping hand to one less strong in faith than yourself.'

'I know considerably less than you do.' It was impossible to tell if the stormtrooper High Colonel was sincere, or if he was playing along, giving the Captain enough rope to hang himself.

'Some of your people know more - I need to talk to one of your hunter-killer teams, Omega-17-Blue. I believe they are fairly well informed about subjects like the Jedi, and the Force.'

Long silence. The High Colonel sat there like a statue; undoubtedly involved in internal comms. Lennart wished he could overhear. 'Agreed.'

Lennart sighed with relief. 'Tell them, whenever they're ready. Dismissed - and on your way, send Commander Mirhak-Ghulej in. It'll be a refreshing change of pace to deal with a nice, normal problem like two of my officers threatening to murder each other.'