'Today's topic: how to abuse a tensor field.' The chief began.

That raised a few eyebrows. The audience were a mixture of junior officers who needed to know, senior officers in for a refresher and members of other departments who wanted to know what Engineering was up to.

A hand went up; gunnery, port battery commander.
'Abuse, commander?'

'Nine tenths of the technology we use- 91.2% to be exact-' only the engineers realised it was a joke- 'is described by the function it performs, or by the manufacturer's advertising department.
Don't get me started on the subject of durasteel; and we have 'power converters', that in the forces they convert, from and to, are entirely separate technologies from each other. It's as loose and woolly a term as "flying machine".'

The 'lecture hall' was actually one of the bays of Main Machinery, subsection 2; sub-1 was the MCR, the master control centre for the ship's engineering functions, sub-2 was central repair and reconstruction. Most of the audience was sitting or leaning against disabled component parts; the chief engineer's lectern was an auxiliary power unit from one of the main turrets, and there were about eight hundred manufacturing droids stored on the gantry behind him.

'The specifications come from the same sources. Abuse is a loose term; properly, use to it's limits.' Holodisplay; Force field architecture of an Imperator- class destroyer.
Secondary display; force field architecture of a Venator- class destroyer.
'Basic observation, people. What changed from one generation to the next?'

'Modularity?' one of the main drive technical officers- Lieutenant Marnart- asked.

'Correct. A good decision, made for the wrong reasons.' The displays showed coloured dots, red tensor, blue stasis, green relative inertial, turquoise hyperdrive, orange atmospheric, yellow particle and violet ray shielding generators, haze around them showing areas of effect.
'The Venator is wartime construction. Of the ship rather than combat functions, one of each plus secondary/backup. To improve, it is necessary, and I mean it this time, to abuse it or replace it, frequently necessary after abusing it in any event.'

'Why wasn't she designed to the limits of the technology to begin with?' damage control Lieutenant Sprenger.

'Cost, safety and diminishing returns. Cost; two hyperdrive cores are more expensive than one plus the support machinery to expand the hyperfield to the same area.
Safety; our multiples have to be integrated with each other. This places a burden on the skills and computing resources of the ship that is non-trivial.
Diminishing returns; take a hypothetical. With a 100kps2 relative inertial field, this ship becomes a danger to her crew. Power hungry, inefficient, causes unnecessary strain, and you now stand a good chance of being slammed to your death against the fore rather than aft bulkheads.'

Slight ripple of laughter at that. The chief engineer carried on. 'The Imperator is post war construction. This changes the design objectives. The Venator is more efficient in the short term, but their service life is two centuries at best, and the single large generator format makes them expensive and difficult to refit.

The Imperator class- one of whose design objectives was to deal with the refuse left over by the clone wars- is more efficient in the long term. The redundant multiple medium generator format makes us more damage tolerant- with proper system management- easier to repair by replacing damaged elements of the network, easier to upgrade if the investment becomes materially or politically possible. Also, the convolutions of baffling and mirroring necessary to get an even field intensity out of generators which obey the inverse square law become more manageable.'

'If I ever allow any of you to slack off long enough to read it,' Mirannon said, looking at the engineering personnel, 'I have a file of the considered-and-rejected design proposals for the Imperator that rewards study. Particularly as, given KDY's other commitments and the politically driven haste the Imperator design was finalised with, the yards license- building them filled in the blanks largely to their own ideas. Frequently with elements rejected for the official design.

Sienar- built ships, recognisable by their more centralised hyperdrive arrangements, have the worst maintenance and serviceability records in the fleet; carelessness caused by corporate envy.
Even KDY/Fondor versions are different from KDY/Kuat- more heavily armoured and fractionally slower, sub-control centres separately armoured, fire control and sensors more sensitive but less jam resistant, their most serious flaw is an old school ring-main power system.'

'This ship?' one of Brenn's plotters asked.

'Correllian built, which is good. Not luck- determinism, we wouldn't have survived this long unless she had been. The 695 to 782 batch were assembled to very stringent specifications because Correllian Engineering were aiming for a larger share of the construction tenders. They actually tried to win a contract by producing a superior product, instead of resorting to bribery and corruption as usual. Show of hands- who thinks it worked?'

Roughly a third of the personnel present.

'I wish. They do a lot of refit business, though. KDY/Kuat's build quality started high but declined with growing complacency, Fondor's began as mediocre and improved, Loronar's are distinctively more fragile, lighter and faster, and Rendili stuck their own bridge tower design on the 11280 to 11431 batch as well as replacing between ten to thirty of the LTL's with medium turbolaser clusters and missile tubes. Those are the ones that made it into production.'

'Sir, I know we're supposed to be here to learn about structural reinforcement fields, but could you tell us more about the rejected elements of the design?' Sprenger asked.

'You're going to go away knowing what I want you to know. The only variable is how much time you sidetrack me into wasting on other matters first… The most interesting is a massively parallel multiple micro generator design. That would have broken the ship up into fifteen thousand separate zones, each with it's own fighter class or better hyper, stasis, tensor and relative inertial nodes.

It failed primarily because of the massive overload it would have placed on the human component. Also because the individual nodes, as a consequence of their size, had limited capability.
There were two further developments; one which ventured into utter lunacy, by encapsulating each zone. The ship would have resembled fifteen thousand light freighters glued together. Combined and separate combat modes for a ship like that would have been interesting verging on bizarre.
Not everything possible is good to do- there are very good reasons that one stayed on the drawing board.'

'Massive overload on the human component? Sir, is that a euphemism for "splat"?' one of the fighter wing ground crew, a tech sergeant.

'No, it means that by the time you'd finished learning how to look after them properly you would have been eight years dead.
Actually, frequently it is a euphemism for splat. The splinter version would have had a malfunction and accident rate well beyond any sustainable or acceptable limit. Believe it or not, the engineering department does respect human limitations. Occasionally. Most of the time, we just bitch about them.'

He drank from his glass of water- there had been a spate of practical jokes a couple of months back; something in the water, and half the ship had been peeing emerald green. The joker responsible had never been caught; the chief suspects were the medics. And himself.

He went on; 'Maintenance and upgradeability is my hobby-bantha, not the topic at hand, and I will ramble on it at the end of the lecture, not the beginning. Tensor fields; what are they?' He looked for a non- engineer to get an answer from.

'They, ah, reduce tension on the ship's hull by exporting part of her mass into subspace…?' one of the galley staff asked.

'Droids, lynch that man.' Mirannon turned to them; they were inhibited from anything of the sort, but most of them had acquired enough personality to act it. They activated, turned glowing eyes on him, started to clank forward-

'I'm sorry I didn't mean it-' he gabbled.
Mirannon turned to the droids. 'Stand down.'

'Although,' he continued to the cook, 'you probably do deserve it. No. And relative inertial fields don't rely on subspace, either, something else described by function rather than mechanics.
N+5th generation relative inertials are multiple supporting mechanism; entanglement momentum transfer, field couplings from drive to hull frame, a mesh of compartment- localised gravitic nodes, and how many lectures do you expect me to give at once? Tensors.'

Another holodiagram. 'If you go far enough back, you find stress fields- the ancestors of our tensor field, and another backwards description. The tensor field counteracts stresses in the members of the ship.
Stress fields did this literally, creating opposing and cancelling pressures- converting to more easily withstood forms- which did relatively little for the service lives of the ships they were fitted to.
A tensor field generates a binding and stabilising force within the hull material on the order of the binding energy of an atomic nucleus; this is very easy for it, because that's exactly what it is.'

'So how do we abuse it?' the propulsion engineer, Marnart, asked.

'A strong nuclear force field deploys, and anyone who is surprised by this will have their brain remedially overclocked, nuclear levels of energy. If we lose power trunking, the tensor field can be tapped from the nearest local generator as a capacitor bank and input to the local grid.
This is less efficient than doing it properly, but provides a valuable interim measure until we can rig proper DC cable. This has further synergistic benefits; it means we need fewer APUs, which gives us a better mass distribution, improving agility, therefore evasion, reducing the need for them.

Secondly, it can be used to fill in jobs that no structural member could do. Members which may or are required to deform- Durasteel doesn't flex well. In context. There are as many different compositions of durasteel as there are of steel- a detail we will go into later.
Most of the elasticity of the hull comes from the tensor field. The hull frame attachments points are minimal material, mostly field.
The tensor field also serves as the retaining wall for most of the rest of the force fields. It would be possible to project a tensor field without a material carrier, and have it perform most of the functions of a ship- and if any of you are crazy enough to volunteer to test the idea, then you're too stupid to live anyway and I might let you.'

'No, thank you, sir- but why do we have a two meter thick armoured hull, if the force field is tougher than the hull anyway? Why all that material, why not simple plating?' Sprenger, again, asked.

'Short version- we need a framework to bolt the other force field generators to. If properly designed, the fields are mutually supportive. The relative inertials reduce stress on the hull which reduces the load on the tensors, lowering power requirement out of or increasing margin of safety in combat.
There are some interesting things you can do with a stasis field, thermal conductivity and incoming turbolaser fire, too.'

'So if the hull's just a metrology aid-'

'The stresses imposed on it by the force field architecture are substantial; orders of magnitude better than bare metal, but still demanding. The hull is also our fail safe.
It has to possess sufficient strength to function without the force fields. If properly put together- and dockyard workmanship plays at least as large a part in this as basic design- should be able to support and withstand a failing force field complex long enough for us to remedy or execute controlled shutdown.

Lastly it must be a material or composite of materials that can benefit from tensor and relative inertial fields. Iron, at the lowest point of the binding energy curve, is too stable for this.
Depleted-electron-shell materials are advantageous, nuclei closer together and we turn a disadvantage into an advantage by using the opportunity to apply active electromagnetic binding and stabilisation also.
Neutronium would be perfect, if we had drives of literally infinite power. Stealth is nearly irrelevant, because when we are emitting stellar power levels from the ion drive, we're approximately as visible as if we did.

Until that happy day, we will employ as much as we have the mass budget for. Those of you who have no head for numbers may wish to leave now. Now consider a material structure of composition…'

Two supposedly secret transmissions. One of which crossed the signal intercept team's desk, the other did not.

Embedded in a message, supposedly to her sister;

Vineland sector, oversight group eleven.
Hathren, J. System cell Ghorn, network Lobat-4, reporting.

Situation complicated. I have been conscripted into the Imperial Navy as the result of an incident- refer to the news. I am on board the ship currently at the top of our watch list, and in a position of some access.

Frankly, it's far too good to be true. I hope this harmonic coding is as secure as it's supposed to be.
I have been employed- they haven't even tried particularly hard to indoctrinate me yet, and yes, I know how dubious that sounds, it's far from the only worrying thing about this situation- as a personal servant, they call them stewards, to look after an officer in disgrace.

It's possible that they want me to do them a favour by abducting him. From what I have been able to see of life on board this ship, something as basically abnormal as that seems to be a daily occurrence.

When I said I wanted to do something different, this wasn't what I had in mind. To achieve as much as we know they have, the crew of this ship must be sharper than they seem. Common sense eaten up completely by their jobs? It would fit.

This ship is in much better condition on the inside than the outside. I have some access to the ship's personnel files- one of the people I was involved with is possibly the top ranking gunner in the sector, never mind the ship, and he could pass for fifteen. Away from the trigger.

I can't funnel bulk data through a covert channel like this; I'll have to cherrypick. The ship is theatre reserve, not local; she has wider access. It seems odd to call a ship named 'Black Prince' she, but they refer to her that way.

Anyway, it will take time for me to get into a position to extract and exfiltrate. I'll trickle what I can, and should have valuable data when- let's not tempt fate; if- I do.

Defection prospects? Unlikely. With so much blood on their hands, they would be unwelcome in the Alliance, and besides, they would probably make us look bad.

Candidate/Watcher 22173, reporting.

Interim observation, candidate Lennart, J.A.

Status; unpromising. Candidate has genuine talent, intuitive/precognitive, sense related, but is under only moderate pressure to develop it. Candidate is a man of significant status and other talents, but little outward ambition.

Recommendation; push rather than pull. To force development of his abilities, a threat to what he already has is indicated. Perhaps this ship would make a fitting flagship for one of your protégées.

Secondary subject, Mirannon, G.K.Q.

Status; contraindicated. Subject has displayed a number of task- related abilities apparently without broader grounding, but is only subliminally aware of them if at all. Subject is also openly contemptuous of such talents.

Recommendation; playing on this one's pride and ambition could work, but given his attitude and approach, it would be difficult to make use of him.

Security warning; prime prospect intuited his way to a nearly complete understanding of the Ord Corban operation. Subject is loyal, but from pragmatic reasons. Rebel exploitation of this cannot be delayed much longer- see candidate recommendation.

One lecture, two messages, three captains.

In Lennart's day cabin, Commander Aythellar Barth-Elstrand, whose Meridian was orbiting nearby, and Senior Lieutenant Ertlin Kondracke, whose Lancer was under repair just adjacent.

'Gentlemen, thank you both for coming to see me.' He was a senior captain, in charge of a fleet destroyer; there was no way they wouldn't. His politeness warned them something was up, though.

'I wish this was simple ship visiting; instead, I have a problem and a possible solution to put to you.' Lennart was, rarely, properly and impeccably uniformed; his typical state of half undress wouldn't do, not for this. He had to look as thoroughly, officially imperial as possible.

Kondracke looked barely old enough for his command, something made worse by the sling on his arm. He looked like a child who had fallen out of a tree. Elstrand was fair- haired and red faced, looked more like a prosperous bantha rancher than a fleet officer.

'What is it, Captain?'

'You were very quick to come to support us.' Lennart said. 'I'm guessing you don't get too many opportunities to use your guns in anger?' the young man's face opened up.

'Captain, the local rebels are driving me mad. We hear snatches of comm, catch bursts of drive light, chase broken holonet threads, they're there. They have to be. We never get within gun range of them. Well, until now.'

'Same situation. We have the sense that we're being played with.' Elstrand added. 'Your ship's seen more action in two weeks than the sector fleet has in two years.'

Lennart nodded. 'They have come gunning for us, and as a result of that we have taken down and brainripped enough of them that we now have more to go on than the sector fleet. Enough, I think.'

'So where do we fit in?' Elstrand asked. He realised a second later that he hadn't called his superior officer 'Sir'; significant breach of discipline. Two seconds after that it sank in that Lennart hadn't called him on it.

'The information from the captured frigate strongly indicates the rebels have a very strong presence in the sector, protecting a hidden facility.' Hidden in plain sight, behind the Ubiqtorate.

There was another double-play going on there, especially with an alien Moff, Lennart could almost taste the edges of it. 'Sector command doesn't want us to go after it.'

'What?' Kondracke shouted. 'They're- they're allowing this?'

'I hoped you'd react like that.'

'Allow me to second my junior colleague's outrage, Sir.' Elstrand said.

'It wouldn't be the first do not engage order in the navy's history, or the least well thought out- your Moff told my Navigator that he was leading the rebels into a trap. Lulling them into a false sense of security.' Lennart's tone indicated what he thought of that.
'We have more than enough real work to do in this sector without political bullsh- er, interference, Sir.' This sector had a lot of money spent on it by the Republic Terraforming Agency, and relatively little of it wisely.

Four running ecological catastrophes, one imminent nova, two alien species, one economically expansionist and one too widespread to be anything like as peaceful as they seemed.

'I know. Which is why I intend to use the standing orders of the Imperial Starfleet on supporting other ships to get around that,' Lennart informed them, watching their enthusiasm grow, 'and set up a very public, very noticeable meeting engagement. Are you with me?' He hardly had to ask; they were.

'Do you know what the most annoying thing about being a part- time white hat is?' Aldrem asked the rest of his team, rolling out of the line of fire behind a prickly shrub, one of many in the artificial jungle.

'Not being allowed to shoot each other.' Gendrik snarled back, annoyed. For people whose jobs revolved around shooting and being shot at, an alarming number of Stormtroopers seemed to enjoy it as a hobby as well. 'Playing with fresh meat' also came pretty high on the list.

It was a triple function facility; backup life support and food production, recreation, training ground. It could have passed for a botanical garden, if it wasn't for the stun blaster bolts going back and forward. Surprisingly, the plants didn't react badly to being stunned; some of them even thrived under it. Just as well, considering.

The troopers had reacted fairly predictably to having a turret crew team dumped on them; they had done their duty, coldly and professionally. When no one who might be disturbed was looking, they laughed their asses off. The fifteen gunners had been thrown in at the deep end. Fitness training, weapons training - Suluur had dented their smugness a little by outshooting all of the instructors with a heavy rifle - survival training, and exercises like this.

They called it 'tactical awareness'; the list to volunteer as opposing force was long. A chance to shoot navy - why not?

The control chamber had a dozen troopers in it, ten more than necessary.

'Preliminary evaluation - wash them out. Transfer them to the Starfleet.' The staff sergeant in the master control seat said.

'That would be inappropriate, Sergeant. They're not here to learn to be stormtroopers, they're here to learn to leave the close assault business to the professionals.' One of the spectators - Omega-blue-17-Aleph One - said.

'Three of them are enjoying it, Sir Scan Tech Suluur, PO Hruthhal, Weapon Mechanic (Leading) Tarshkavik - they could do well with proper training. In fact Suluur may be too good for a rookie. He's done this before.'

'They all have, at least once.'

'They could be useful, Sir. The senior chief's the best shot with an emplacement weapon I've ever seen. Although I do not understand how he achieved his rank.' The sargeant's scorn - and envy - was evident in his voice.

'In the army he would be a Specialist-9, but the star fleet has no efficient way of dealing with men of high skill and low fitness for responsibility - short of making them junior lieutenants.'

Fifteen minutes, it was supposed to take, to set up an E-Web.

Those fifteen minutes included leveling the tripod, building up an earth and ablative foamcrete berm to protect it, digging in the generator, making contact with neighbouring units, setting up aim point and fire arc markers in the enhanced sight system, and getting the rest of the squad in place to provide defensive crossfire and keep any approaching grenadiers' heads down.

'Crash Action'- plonk the damned thing down any way it went and hose the target- took ten seconds, if that.

Aldrem had taken to the E-web instantly, and had been overheard wondering whether he could get one assigned to himself, personally, and how he could probably fit it on a repulsorsled, and wouldn't planet leave be much safer with their own organic fire support?

Even most of his own team thought he was nuts. They knew he was kidding, but they still didn't trust him.

'Areath, go right, round that funky thing with the blue flowers and tendrils. If it tries to eat you, vape it.'

'With an exercise blaster hardwired to stun. Right.'

'Then kriffing well beat it to death.' Aldrem said, popping up and firing a long burst at a low, spreading, vaguely animate looking food plant.

Three stormtroopers, well out of the line of fire, shot back at him, he dived for cover, one of them connected and he went down twitching like a rattlesnake; Suluur shot back, rapidly dropping two of them. The old reflexes were coming back now, which was probably bad for him. He dropped behind a set of trays, looked around to see who was still on his feet.

Stang, he thought, that looked far too competent. He stuck his head up, looking for a way to get shot that didn't seem too suspicious.

'Advisory, Sir.' The training staff sergeant, KF-5614, asked Aleph One. 'Are there any other considerations we should be aware of?'

'In other words, why am I interested?'

'I never before appreciated how large the difference is between 'unflinching' and 'too dumb to duck', Sir.' KF-5614 said.

'You think we're beating a set of learned reflexes into them that will make them less efficient in their primary job?'

'I believe that may be the case. This is the basic training the Starfleet gets them to unlearn when it goes about turning them into efficient gunners, Sir.'

'Don't worry. These are some of the ship's problem children. They'll do something absurd and be put on an intensive gunnery refresher course sooner or later.'

'I see, Sir.' The training sergeant wanted to know more, but was too disciplined to ask.

Captain broadcasting to the crew;
'All hands, this is Captain Lennart. As most of you know, we've been busy lately. Unfortunately, it turns out that there's a reason for this. This sector is quiet not because there are no rebels, but because it seems they have an interest in not drawing attention. They have strong base facilities they do not want to have exposed, so when we blundered in, they tried twice for a relatively cheap kill, which only got me…interested.

'If they have any sense, they'll now be keeping their heads down and waiting for us to go away. Unfortunately, events indicate they do in fact have some sense. What I think happened is an Alliance internal communications SNAFU; regional command sent units to assault us and the tender, local command threw a fit when they found out. They have too much of a logistic base here to hazard it. We're more or less operational now, and I would be pleasantly surprised if they decided to try again.

'Coincidentally, and I know some rumours have been emanating from the fighter wing, the sector Moff has asked us to go away too. He says he has things in hand. This is a Moff who let things get this bad in the first place, so colour me skeptical.

'We are going to be following a course of action that may seem…dubious, verging on outright disloyalty.

'There won't be time for detailed explanations, not until afterwards, but we are acting in the best interests of the Empire- under cover of a thick screen of bluff and poodoo.

'Some of you who have been with this ship longest will remember similar operations. You know what a high WTF factor they usually have. Our objective is to lure Alliance forces into a straight fight; but it is going to be a twisty, windy path getting them there.

'Internal operations will continue as normal, and if external events confuse you, spare a thought for the command team who actually have to manage it all. Black Prince Actual out.'

Around the ship, various people took the news in their own way.

Hathren, J., rebel spy in residence, was dumbfounded. There were still a lot of her people in the cells, she daren't do anything about helping them without blowing her cover. Yet. She had a half-formed escape plan, and it would be easier and safer if it was a mass escape. But how much more would there be to find out?

Most Rebel captains - certainly the very formal Mon Cal - would tell their crews far less than this, never mind Imperial Starfleet.

This was professional opportunity beyond her wildest dreams. She knew perfectly well she was probably going to stay too long, to draw too much attention and give herself away - the lure was very strong.

Not the only one. The man she had been assigned to, Mirhak-Ghulej, spent most of his time sitting on the edge of his bunk, looking lost. He twitched, he ranted, he sat in black depression.

She was used to handling awkward customers; she needed all that experience. His world had just turned round and bit him.

The other people she had to work with - they were, in a word, different. Whatever popular support the Rebellion had, the overwhelming majority of those at the sharp end were there for a reason. Some ideology, some incident, some Imperial brutality. This bunch was - the word she was looking for, she finally decided, was normal.

For the given circumstances, of course. They were mostly male, surrounded by high technology, with duties, responsibilities and enough firepower to depopulate a world down to the algae, but given that, basically stable.
For a given, bored, grumpy, practical joke ridden value of stable, anyway. He took no notice of her, until much later that day; she came back to his cabin, after fetching a snack from the galley, and found someone had pumped helium into his quarters' air-system.

'Someone', internal arrangements varied; on most ships, life support belonged to Logistics and Supply branch, on the Black Prince the lifesystem belonged to Engineering. Lennart had long since given up trying to hold back their colonial tendencies. Their version of the shoulder patch had the knight holding a hydrospanner, as often as not.

He started to bawl her out, stiff faced, harsh and typically Imperial, but it came out in such a high-pitched whine, she started to chuckle. He shouted at her more, which only made her worse, until she doubled over in - the helium was wafting out of the room - squeaky laughter. As she did, she noticed the glint of a lens poking round the corridor corner.

The Exec's quarters were the largest and best appointed unit in a quarters block directly adjacent to damage control central; in combat, the captain ran things from the bridge, the chief engineer from the MCR, the Assistant Chiefs oversaw their components of the ship, one of the two Deputy Chiefs went to the bridge, one to DC central.
The way it was supposed to work was that the exec made decisions from the operational point of view, prioritising what they needed fixed, and the deputy chief assigned assets to do it. It looked as if he had decided that what needed to be done was embarrass the exec, live on camera.

He was still shouting, grabbed her and tried to get her to stand up straight, managed it - she was too busy laughing - tried to slap her. She moved instinctively to block, caught herself just as she was about to slam the edge of her hand into his throat.

He looked as surprised as she was. She stepped back along the corridor, breathed deeply to get any helium out of her lungs, and said, 'If you really, truly cannot see the funny side of this, then I reckon you deserve everything the captain did to you.'

That boggled him. He couldn't. She took his arm, guided him back into his chambers as she would a half-cut idiot out of the door of the inn.

She sat him down, controlled her own laughter well enough to talk, squeakily.

'I looked at your file, as well.' She admitted, knowing how much trouble it could get her into. 'You're Mr. Clean, aren't you? Never been on the receiving end…not even violations of uniform codes, never had so much as a civil parking ticket. What I think this is about is, well, showing you the crappy end of the stick. Showing you - from the victim's point of view - what the punishments its your job to hand out mean.'

At least he was looking up at her now.
'How would you react to someone who took a disciplining this badly?' she decided on a harder approach. It sounded absurd under the helium, but what wouldn't?

'I'd…they would be obviously unfit, so I would keep riding them until they were broke or resigned from the service.' He said, thinly.

'So now you're punishing yourself as well. Great Space, how did you ever get this far? What you have to do now is to prove that you are fit, to yourself and to him. Those recommendations should take almost as long to read as they will to write; how does he expect to do that? What shortcut is Captain Lennart planning to use? Work it out, exploit it yourself.'

His face brightened; he should have thought of that himself, but it was still a good idea. The air was starting to clear; evidently they had given up on the helium.

'The other thing is to work out what to say on those recommendations, to prove you deserve your job back.'
He was already moving towards his desk and the stack of datapads with the files.

Franjia Rahandravell and Aron Jandras didn't dare say what they were thinking, because they were being detailed for the craziest mission either of them had ever heard of. It would only have been a long string of swear words, anyway.

'They call it a destabilisation operation, I believe.' Olleyri had them in the ready room of Alpha squadron.

'They can call it anything they like, I think it's crazy.' Aron was standing, leaning over the desk, trying not to shout at the commander air group, and getting close to ceasing to care.

'That's exactly why you're the man for the job.'

'What,' Franjia asked, 'because he has no faith in this, that makes him appropriate? And what about me?'

'You're right. It is fundamentally insane. The situation that makes it necessary is demented. So it fits perfectly.' Olleyri told them.

'I'm not that good an actress.'

'We're not going to get them to break cover for anything less. Think about it. To get the Rebs to come out to play, we need to give them an objective they can't ignore, and a situation they can realistically do something about. We hand our captives over to the locals and appear to sail off, they organise a public, judicial murder of our prisoners - doesn't that disgust you? Even a little?'

'Would it shock you,' Franjia asked him - both of them, really - 'if I said no?'

'Not much, no.' Olleyri replied. 'The reason its you - rebel frequencies?'

'Why,' Aron rounded on her, 'did you have to work it out?'

'As well hung for a bantha as a nerf. What's really going on?' she asked Olleyri.

Olleyri didn't know. He tried to bluff it out. 'If you know, who else do you think might find out?'

'This should be a purely volunteer job.' Aron said. 'Kriffing espionage detail - I didn't join up for this, I'm not trained for it, and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be any good at it.'

'Nonsense. Command is at least half acting, you ought to know that, and most of the rest is paperwork. The practical rebels will be overjoyed to have two experienced pilots, the idealistic side - it's just the sort of fairytale they love to lap up. And you are going to lead them into such a trap, any Imperial officer would have been proud to set it up.'

'I get shivers,' Aron said, 'when anyone starts talking about me in the past tense.'

'Kriff, I didn't mean that; you are supposed to come back.' Admittedly, he had no idea how. 'But you are definitely supposed to go.' He handed each of them a datapad. 'Read, memorise, destroy. Report to me when you're ready, dismissed.'

They saluted, turned to leave.

In the corridor outside Alpha's bay,
'Franjia-' Aron began. He hardly ever called her that, and especially not outside the cockpit.

She turned and looked down at him. 'Yes, Squadron Leader?'

'We're supposed to be striking out on our own, rediscovering our consciences and our individuality.' He was standing very close; she put a hand on his chest, gently pushed him back.

'No.' He looked hurt, shrivelled. 'I shared a bed for almost a year with Ezirrn Tellick.' She confirmed what he knew. She would have added that she didn't come as a perk of the job, didn't think she needed to go that far.

'I know, Franjia,' he said, sounding pleading, 'it's too soon - but dammit, by the time you feel, you're ready, you know what I mean, we'll be "just friends" '- or dead- 'and it'll be too late.'

'It's too soon for you, too.' She said. 'There's a mess in your head, of anger at being in this, envy, jealousy, a little lust and all the usual madnesses of the fighter pilot- I don't want you to pour that over me. Or expose you to mine.'

She turned on her heel, heading for the simulators; she wanted to put in some B-wing time. Just in case.

'Captain, request permission to volunteer in place of Flight Lieutenant Rahandravell.' OB173 barged straight into Lennart's office and asked him, point blank. Actually, those were words he didn't want to think about.

'Why do you want to do that?' he asked, brain temporarily in boggle mode.

'I'm simply the most appropriate person for the job.' She said, knowing he would guess that it wasn't that simple, and trying to come up with a cover story.

'How do you know,' Lennart recovered and asked her, slowly, 'what the job is?'

'Guesswork. Politics. Intuition. That and I asked her.'

'If she was fool enough to tell you, then anyone would be better for the job.' Lennart agreed. 'She came away unharmed?'

'The most efficient interrogation device ever issued; the human tongue.' Only so because the troopers usually came with one, costing the army nothing.

'Can you fly a B-wing?'

' "You don't fly a B-wing; you just sit in the cockpit while it plods along." ' She quoted Franjia. 'To that standard, yes.'

'So tell me about your cover story.' Lennart asked, professionally.

I'm a talent scout for a dark force adept, good enough to step straight into the ranks of the Sovereign Protectors, and the only reason I haven't risen higher to become an adept in my own right is - I lack the hard edge of moral courage, the guts to take responsibility for the pain and misery I inflict.

I prefer to be told what to do. Show me the path, be it never so black, and I will walk it - but do not ask me to choose it for myself. To that extent, at least, I am the prisoner of my clone heritage.

And I want to be somewhere else, while the situation I have - I hope - set up for you starts to bite. Largely because, I have told myself, I can appear to be on your side, and manipulate you appropriately.

She might be able to say that to him, eventually. In the meantime she settled for 'I'd need naval cover, a divisional officer or someone in Supply branch with part responsibility for the prisoners-'

'If that's the best you can do, forget it.' Lennart said. 'You haven't had any contact with them, any leak there - and there may be, accidental or deliberate - means your head on the block and, worse, a blown operation.' He was deliberately brutal about that.

'I don't think you can pass for anything other than a trained killer. Start with a feasible motive, then sort out who could be credibly found holding it.'

'Professional jealousy.' She said, straight away. 'Responsibility for them was taken away from me - I don't have to pose to pass as an interrogator - and I got stroppy about it. I'm a talker; I cajole them, trick them into giving up their secrets. The new man was more the racks and pincers type, typical bloodthirsty blundering Imperial, half sadist and half moron.' She smiled at that one; a lot of the Rebels did think in stereotypes, but the smarter ones - for instance, intelligence officers - didn't.

'I reacted badly to that - crisis of conscience, to the extent of breaking him with his own tools. Then I had nothing else to do but run for it, and where else but to the Alliance?'

'Very nice.' Lennart said. 'lots of small problems that can be plugged, and one insoluble one. The rebels have undoubtedly been guessing, they may even have got it right. The chief reason they haven't tried to employ their political weapon is that they are smart enough to know that, even if they say the truth, without backing it with evidence - in practical terms it's just a conspiracy theory. You can tell them entirely too much about what to think, where to look. That makes it an unjustifiable risk. You would be better for the job - if it wasn't for that. Request denied, dismissed.'

She looked worried as she left, probably for herself. That was backwards; his instincts twitched a little. He would think about that later, there was another piece of the puzzle to move.

This time it was just him on his own; Aldrem wondered if that was a good or a bad thing.

'Sit down, Senior Chief.' The captain told him. Oh crap, he was really in for it.

'Least things first; from your, ah, top end heavy perspective, an E-web may seem little different from a common blaster pistol - but I assure you; no.'

The captain was being flippant. He had probably decided to keelhaul him after all.

'Your team is returned to normal duty, I'm going to need you to do some trick shooting for me. In about four or five hours, our rebuilt pair of B-wings will be checked out, and they will be beyond accurate LTL range before anyone realises they're not coming back. You are going to try to shoot them down, and miss. Very narrowly.'

'It's a setup, Sir?' Aldrem asked.

'Yes. Do not actually hit them. Two other things- your local control op.'

'Areath Suluur? He's an essential part of the team, Sir.' Aldrem stood up for his man.

'He's almost certainly a deserter from the Republic navy, part of one of the clone gun teams on an early Venator; he spent ten years AWOL at the end of the Clone Wars, before joining the Imperial Starfleet under a false ID.'

The senior chief looked horrified. 'Sir, if that's true-'

'If I had actually bothered to check up on it, I'm fairly sure I would be certain. I haven't bothered. Just tell him to be slightly less effective in man to man combat, because if I can work it out, I'm sure the Legion's veterans can.'

Aldrem was puzzled, but not unhappy. 'Thank you, Sir.'

'I'm not going to throw away a good gun team. Last thing, have you bumped into your girlfriend recently?'

'If this is about the fraternisation regs, it's not an issue, I mean yes, but the rank thing-'

'She's already done one major service for the ship, by stopping the exec looking more than mildly foolish, and as I had hoped, injecting him with a dose of classic Rebel sticktoitiveness. Under her influence he should do well.'

'That's good-' then Aldrem's brain caught up with his ears. 'Rebel?'

'Afraid so.' The captain handed him the message pad; the only thing he had done was blank out the part about Aldrem passing for fifteen. 'It raises a couple of interesting questions.'

'But she doesn't, she isn't, she can't-' Aldrem was trying not to believe his own eyes.

'Does, is and can, but I do have some leeway in this. What I want is for her to defect to us and turn states' evidence, what happens then - she shouldn't be killed, but it could still be fairly unpleasant. If she can help us reel the rebel force we're after in, if you can turn her all the way, and I think you may be able to, I'll give the bride away at your wedding myself.'

'Sir, I mean, I see it, but I don't believe it. I just can't get it into my gut that she's a Reb.'

'That doesn't make it wrong for you to like her, or unbelievable for her to like you; it just makes it very awkward. Go and put it right.' Lennart ordered him, confident-sounding.

'Sir, can I-'

'By all means, talk to your team about it, but no further. After all, as willful as she obviously is, she belongs on this ship.'