Flag Deck, Imperial II-class SD Quill, Horuz System
"Security is at its top level. The only perceived leak after the slave rig jump can only come from Tarkin's crew aboard the Havelon." Yutu reported. He stood at the front of the bridge in front of a HoloVid of his presentation. He enjoyed the Admiral's way of reporting. Early in the morning he would have his chief officers' report to him in an informal meeting. Yutu as the Chief Intelligence went after the Supply and Personnel officers, Commander Charge, but before the Fleet Operations Officer, Commander Dual. Several times the Admirals of the other Moffs' fleets had attended the briefings and even Moffs Culter and Kuat had made an appearance the day before. At the end of everyones' reports Yos would then issue his orders for the day, usually based on his subordinates advise. Yutu wondered why more Fleet Admirals didn't do the same.
"Is there any way to plug up that leak on our end?" The Admiral asked.
"Not on our end, the Grand Moff has ordered a complete communications blackout from the maw. It will be up to Tarkin to control any information from escaping from the construction site and the crews of his fleet. He assures us, he has that possibility well in hand. From my understanding he's somehow even tricked ISB's agents until helping him out with their relentless search for spies and rebels."
"We are to launch a packet ship from the maw thirty days after our arrival with an update on the status of Tarkin's Fist. I think he also wants to hear Daala's reaction. I'm starting to get the impression that she doesn't know we're coming either." The Operations Commander interjected.
"Then we shall do so." Yos said "I'm concerned with the new personnel. I can see Ishin-II-Raz pulling a fast one on us and sneaking an COMPNOR agent out here. We need to be vigilant right up till the moment the slave rig engages."
"Yes, sir. Isard assigned some of his top men to your fleet. We'll keep on top of it."
"How are you doing with the starship captains I had you two meet?" Yos asked his two men.
Commander Dual answered for the two of them. "Most of the flag officers in the fleet are a little nervous about the slave rig thing. The Katana legend is a little too ingrained in their mentalities. Commander Yutu has done a great job assuaging their fears. Still the pucker factor is pretty high." That was another thing he liked about the elderly Admiral, he let his men speak their minds. He nodded his agreement with his fellow officer's assessment.
"Is there anything else, Commander?" his report had lasted almost forty minutes, but hadn't even come close to the two hour torture the Supply Officer had inflicted on them. They had been taking on a tremendous amount of supply and materials, so he supposed it had been necessary.
"No, Sir. That concludes my report for today."
"Excellent, make sure you send your proposals to my datapad, and some of the officers in Signal Interception want to meet with you when you get the chance."
"As soon as I can, I will do so, sir." Yutu took his seat as the Operations Officer took his turn. Across the table the Commander Charge worked on his own datapad. Another lesser Admiral would have yelled at the officer for working during a meeting, but Yos understood it was a very busy time for his crew.
When the meeting let out Yutu made his way down to the Signal Warfare shop that he had set up as his own. The Quill was one of the latest ships-of-the-line and as such was equipped with the state of the art in signal and sensor interception gear. Signal Interception already reported to him, so it was a sign of the stress the Admiral had been under in the last few days to cause him to forget that. Yutu's office was within meters of the ship's bridge and it was a matter of seconds before he walked into the red lit room. None of the men moved when they noticed his arrival. He had already given them permission to ignore any one that wasn't the Fleet Admiral or one of the Moffs. Even the Quill's captain got ignored. The red lights helped the crewmen stare at their sensor screens without straining their eyes. A large HoloVid projected the system and the fleet's location in the middle of the room. Two crewmen listened to an intercepted subspace transmission from the Death Star's flight control to a flight of ore haulers entering the Horuz system. The men were getting a lot of training before the big jump. He remembered from his previous trips to the maw that there wasn't any signals to speak of coming in. He wondered what work he would find for these sailors once they arrived at their destination.
He set down in the command chair in the room. "Anything new since I left?" he had been sleeping in a small alcove just off to the rear of the room. He didn't want to miss anything.
First Lieutenant Knebler piped up. "Nothing big, all the starships and prisoners Tarkin could sneak off of Despayre have checked in and taken their positions. Those Kuati destroyers have been chatting it up with each other quite a bit this morning, but nothing more beyond that. We already sent a message about signal security, but it seems as if one of their laboratory ships is up to something."
"They knock it off?"
"For now, sir."
"Anything else?"
"Not really." The young lieutenant never took his eyes off the heads-up display at the front of the room. A good man there Yutu thought.
"How soon do you think before the fleet is ready to sail?"
"From what I understand they're waiting for thirteen cargo container ships to arrive sometime after 0000 hours, and those are coming with us so they don't need to be unloaded. Seco's loading up two battalions of jungle troopers from planetside right now and they should be back on board his warships within the next five hours. We have almost ten squadrons of TIEs and one of ARC-170s out there, so it would take another twenty minutes to load all of them aboard their respective carriers, so I'd say sometime after those cargo haulers join us after midnight." Yutu was impressed the man knew every movement of the fleet. He'd make a great Bridge Commander someday.
"Wizard. They're downloading the slave rig at 0800 triple zero time tomorrow. It'll be my show after that."
"You'll get us there, Commander. I have no doubt." It was nice to have the faith of his men. These men hadn't even been under his command a week ago, which showed how fast they had taken to their young commander.
Yutu popped his datapad out of the arm of his chair and put his security code in it to activate the thing. He didn't have any urgent messages waiting him so he started looking over his fleet operations files. As he did so he thought of the men who would lead Tarkin's Fist when they started their mission within the maw. Three Moffs under the command of a Fleet Admiral was a recipe for disaster. He wondered what Tarkin had been drinking when he had come up with that part of the plan.
Moff Kuantus Kuat was easily the most famous of the four men. Over a trillion shareholders of KDY had watched his every move for the past decade and he had made a lot of them extremely wealthy. He was easily the richest being in the fleet. His faked demise had been all over the HoloNews nonstop for the past few days, but it looked like his son, the newly appointed Kuat of Kuat, was taking the reins of the company with an energetic flourish. Palpatine had even announced new contracts that exceeded anything the company had ever seen, which had caused the company's stocks to rebound back after the news of Kuantas's passing. The man was a genius, not only had he faked his own death but brought an entire fleet with him. The man had dedicated himself to science and had enrolled tens of thousands of the wisest beings in the Galaxy in this project. Yutu looked forward to seeing some of their discoveries. Kuat had promised Yos that an exciting era in scientific achievement was about to dawn. Yutu just hoped Yos could keep the Kuati in line.
Moff Uredo Culter was a man cut from a similar cloth. He was a virtual unknown on Imperial Center. The Ord Mantellian had successfully terraformed twenty-five planets and the only one who had noticed was the Emperor. It was just that terraforming was such a boring profession that no one ever took note of it. Palpatine had stuck the scientist out in the Outer Rim Territory as Moff of the Anoat Sector. He had been about to start work on some planet named Hoth when Tarkin had plucked the terraformer from obscurity. Yos had ordered a strict subspace radio blackout on the man's flagship because he kept in communication with so many of his fellow terraformers outside of the hidden fleet. Yutu actually snorted at the thought because he had recently learned that there was actually only two other terraforming teams in the Galaxy and they were about as forgettable as Culter was. The man seemed to have no operational control over his own fleet and it appeared that some Clone Wars veterans had taken over some of his starships. Yutu had made overtures to them and they had assured him they were loyal to Admiral Yos and the Grand Moff.
Moff Vulnert Seco was another story. As a lifelong military man, he had been responsible for some of the worst trooper losses of the Clone Wars. He was a big fan of the philosophy of winning at any cost. He then had served under Vader in the slave roundups on Kashyyyk after the war. Vader had personally force choked the man before flinging him into a nearby tree because Seco accidently let some wookiee cubs escape. After several months in a coma Seco had awaken to be greeted by the Grand Moff. He had recovered on board the Havelon and had vowed to Tarkin he would have his revenge on Vader, and the Empire could be damned. Tarkin promoted him to Moff and stuck him out in the Ploo Sector. A forgotten sector in the back waters of the OverSector Outer, where he had nothing to do but put down union strikes and an outbreak of civil war on Corsin. He was making overtures to Moff Kuat for the use of his personal Imperial Floating Drydock, which Kuat had brought along from the KDY shipyards. Evidently Seco was planning on making up for the loss of overall command by having the most starships in the fleet. Kuat was just used to being around drydocks, and it had been natural for him to bring one along. Yutu made a mental note to keep an eye on Moff Seco.
Yutu's eye traveled to his commander's file. Fleet Admiral Aveo Yos had been born on Denon to a Denonian System's Naval Captain and his wife, a Denonian dancer of some limited celebrity on Denon. He had graduated with high marks from the Republic Academy on Carida, but had been denied fighter training. A few years after that had been quite a mystery on his service record, but it seemed he was a transport pilot of some sort. He had served in the Stark-Hyperspace Conflict and had even ended up in the Victory Fleet during the Clone Wars. He made Flag Rank there and had served under Tarkin in the Subterrel for most of the past decade. Somewhere along the line he had picked up a daughter who had been given the commission of an Imperial Cadet at the young age of four. Yutu saw nothing in the record that said who her mother was. Tarkin obviously thought a great deal about the man and had given him high performance marks. It was a wonder the officer wasn't a Moff, though Yos never did seem to give too much credit to Palpatine and his regime. His lack of the proper Imperial spirit probably held him back, Yutu figured.
It was quite the mixed bag of Warra nuts, Yutu thought. Tarkin had ordered him to report to him on that packet ship in a month. The Intelligence man was sure the Grand Moff would then order him to assassinate one of them. He figured it would probably be Kuat, but you could never be too sure with the Grand Moff. Something had to be done with the command structure of Tarkin's Fist in the long run. It was just a simple matter of too many Masters and not enough Knights.
He looked at the HoloVid again and the crew around him. However it all turned out, this was going to be an interesting adventure. He got up and went to his alcove for a few hours of sleep.
