The specific ship Falldess intended to kidnap was coming out of her biannual refit. She had chosen with a careful eye on the schedules. A ship which would have to be taken over entire from an active crew was out.
And an eye to her own advancement. When all was said and done, Karu-class were destroyers. Light, but nonetheless.
'Karu' meant 'lady' - worthy, noblewoman - in one of the ancient dialects of Standard, she thought, and all the existing examples were named after women or the xenological equivalent who had made some difference to the sweep of galactic events. It actually seemed to be a back-handed insult, implying that the female, nurturer and egg-layer, of the species had made so little difference on average that they had to be left out of the ordinary sequence of ships like the Senator and Admiral class cruisers, and given special recognition.
Part of the New Order's non-huMan policy, probably.
Falldess didn't greatly care, was confident that she could take that and turn it against them. There was an additional insult that did concern her, though, hidden in the specifications - they were not fast ships. Fast was always better than slow, and destroyers above all else were supposed to be fast: witness the fate of the old Vic-I's. They had been designed to roughly destroyer size, for set piece battles of attrition, and were little use for much else.
Not so much badly designed as well matched to an exacting, but narrow, range of circumstances, which being fit for that made them of relatively little use in peacekeeping, law-enforcement and hunter operations. Excellent deterrents, though. They had largely ended up sidelined on ceremonial and garrison detail.
Twenty-five hundred 'g' was reckoned average and adequate for a fighting ship, much below that and the relative advantage you would give away through being easily outmanoeuvred would make for a disproportionately easy kill, very much more and to build the ship to take that kind of stress meant sacrificing space and weight that would be better spent on firepower.
The Karu-class were average or a shade better, no brilliant performance there. What they did have was a solid main armament, twenty sixty-five teraton heavies in ten twin mounts. More than triple the firepower of her heavy frigate, even if less dexterity to wield it with.
That was in part a self-realisation, one that she hoped was wrong. In that clash with the rRasfenoni, she had fought with some footwork, but not much thought given to actual manoeuvre, not until it was too late. She hadn't used her ship's speed to the full, hadn't done enough to exploit position and agility. She might be better off with a slower, heavier hull.
She had written home about that; by now the entire planet would know, and they would be up in arms. That could make life interesting…but it would take her far too long to pick out and train enough of them to make a crew.
On exercise, she had had a chance to study her squadronmates; they had come nowhere close to filling out the full program, but what they had done had been revealing.
Dordd, the man whose ship she was currently on, was half out of his mind with frustration trying to make his useless crew perform; he was better at this than he realised. Cold and formal, precise and disciplined, but for all the difference between their personal styles it was clear that in his ship-handling he had been understudying Lennart, consciously or not.
Provided he didn't let this experience drain his confidence and enthusiasm, he arguably had more of what the Starfleet wanted from an officer than Lennart did, or she herself.
However, making up the difference between her own crew and what she needed to run a Karu-class destroyer with his rejects - at first, she had been reluctantly accepting, then when she had seen the quality of the personnel he had intended to palm off on her, furious.
When she had the fuller picture of what the quality of his crew was like, she had actually felt rather sorry for him.
Then she had got around to asking why. Captain of the Line Lennart was trying to get a two-for-one; relieve some of the pressure on his own former exec, and hand those pretend excuses for spacemen over to someone who he thought could deal with them. He knew her background, knew that she had successfully dealt with worse; that he still trusted her after she had put her ship too far in harm's way was interesting.
Considering the almost absurdly close relations he seemed to have with his crew, he didn't strike her as indifferent to casualties. Hardened, used to dealing in the marketplace of death? Valued his people all the more for that they might not be around forever?
Either way, it was his word that had permitted - no, sponsored - this mad enterprise.
They had not seen him at his best, she knew, because every exercise, he and his ship were holding back, shaping the battle in order to give the other ships a chance to show - and sharpen - what they could do. Even only giving, say, eighty percent, he was a magician. The way that huge, mottled ship danced and twisted like a starfighter, weaving and gliding through the fire, between the shots of a salvo it seemed, moving at angles you would swear would make it impossible for her to keep her main battery on target- but somehow did.
The crew, though - did he achieve that despite or because of them? Any community that size would inevitably contain a proportion of lunatics, idiots and failures. How did it really work? She would have liked to spend a few days on board Black Prince, just to get the measure of it, the method behind the magic that turned madmen like that Lieutenant and his team into useful, no, exceptional spacers. Dordd probably knew some of the tricks, but in this crowd?
He hadn't even given her the worst. Dividing Dynamic's crew into blocks of two thousand, the bottom group he intended to beach outright, and most of them would be handed dishonourable discharges along the way and told it was that or a blaster bolt.
The second worst lot, he intended to beach 'detached pending reassignment', which meant they could stay there until they rotted.
The third worst he proposed to transfer to her, men who might just have some possibility of improvement but were unlikely to demonstrate it in an environment as bad as Dynamic's.
Dordd proposed to take his ship into combat with a little more than half her nominal crew, and actually felt very much better for it.
There was nowhere where she could get all her existing crew together with the new draft to address them all, although she did have office and computer space to work out a watch and quarters bill.
A few of the wounded had recovered in time, although having to leave a detail behind to look after Tarazed Meridian and continue repairs balanced that out.
It pretty much balanced out, except for one thing - she didn't have to trust any of the transferees in positions of responsibility, because so few of them were rated for any. There was hardly a rank stripe among them, and even fewer good conduct badges.
He could have done a lot worse, she realised; transferred skilled, experienced men from her crew to his, or unloaded some of his very worst on her. And he had been tempted to.
What she had her own little shoulder devil whispering in her ear about was to try to poach Lieutenant Aldrem and his team, by offering him the gunnery officer's slot on Hialaya Karu. Unfortunately, Dordd seemed to have thought of it first, and passed on to her those of his own team disgruntled by the change, including most of his own fire direction team.
The only way she could get this lot together, given Dynamic's status as a fast interceptor destroyer without troop and flight bays, would be to assemble them in spacesuits on the ship's outer hull. Actually, that might not be a bad idea. Anyone who couldn't manage their suit well enough to not drift off or decompress was summarily dismissed the service.
Actually, Dordd - and Lennart - might approve. Consider it plan B. For the moment, com her people and tell them to rouse out the transferees and herd them towards the boarding locks.
Stormtroopers. There was one possible solution to the problem, and also a problem in itself - her frigate had one batallion of troopers, and four, after the loss of one flight bay three, squadrons. The Karu-class had the same fighter-light, troop heavy intervention outfit as the Victories, two squadrons and two regiments. The ground crew and pilots were with her, but whether, and what, they would find to fly, she didn't know. She did hope the ship's stormtrooper complement was on board, or at least standing by.
Hialaya Karu was just finishing refit and was ready to be handed back from dockyard hands to her crew, which seemed to be he perfect time to yoink a ship. There were other ships in the sector she could have opted for, but none for which the timing was so perfect. She did have to wonder if Kor Alric was aware that Lennart had forged his signature on the ops order.
Emergence, and it was obvious that the yard had no idea that they were coming. A waste of a deepdock, mooring it in parking orbit around a planet. In addition to being able to move to where the problem was, they were also supposed to be elusive targets. When something that fragile and that valuable was planted in place, it certainly should have been better defended, but there was almost nothing, only a Golan-II StarGun.
At least the planet was inhabitable, which was good. Somewhere to ditch the incorrigibles.
Dordd did not want to leave his own bridge - he needed the system and the monitors to remain in control of the situation, suspected he wouldn't trust the crew unless he could keep an eye on them. He brought the destroyer in - accurately but painfully slowly - so it was Falldess who got the fun job of telling the commander of Hialaya Karu that she was here to steal his ship.
He was in a borrowed office on the deepdock skeleton that had already been more or less cleared, ready to move back on board: a sharp-nosed, middle aged man, older than she was, and wary of her. 'Commander Falldess? The dock told me you were coming, but I don't understand why. Official observer?'
'Commander Carcovaan,' she acknowledged him. How to do this? Ease and ooze him out, break it gently, or brisk and brash?
'Your ship has been reassigned,' she started. Perhaps it was best to be brutally cheerful, it's all in the game and you just lost this round, just the way of the service.
'Good,' he said, tragically mistaken. 'Just as real things were starting to happen, finally a chance to-'
She cut him off. 'The ship Hialaya Karu has been reassigned, without her crew.' Watching his face fall, she decided 'hard-nosed bitch' might be the right way to go about this after all.
'What?' he spluttered. 'But…she's my ship, my command, who? Who's doing this to me?' Stunned shock, almost bereavement.
Operational Pursuit Squadron 851-Yod,' Falldess said.
'I'll…I'll appeal. I'll contact 851 and have the decision reversed,' he said, and from his expression he knew he was grasping at straws.
'The timing works against you. Region's unlikely to have time to hear your appeal until after Hialaya Karu deploys,' she said, trying to look ruthless, and did not entirely succeed when he said,
'Some of my crew have followed me from ship to ship, commission to commission; I finally get a chance to make a name for myself, something I can use to push them on, and it gets taken away from me?'
'That is the way it is,' she acknowledged.
What should a heartless cow think at this point? 'How long have you had Hialaya Karu?' she asked him.
'Year and a half, exactly, in five days time,' he said.
'Was it impossible for you to make an opportunity for yourself in a year and a half?' she said, stingingly.
'It's difficult to hunt things that aren't officially there,' he snapped back at her.
'I managed it,' she said.
'You?' he said. 'You're going to be taking over my ship?'
'In ten years of close and distant escort, I managed four convoy actions, with a total bag of two Corellian, a Sienar and an old Kuat corvette, and a mutual on a renegade Strike Cruiser - he managed to pound my Carrack beyond repair, but I did the same for him.'
'Oh, come on - a fleet unit, a light destroyer kept on a short rein with virtually no freedom of movement, how was I supposed to find anything for my people to do? This is the chance, this is the golden opportunity I have waited my entire career for, and you're trying to take it away from me,' he said, finding a vein of anger.
'Don't you think there was a reason you weren't chosen for secondment to the pursuit squadron? Chances are not something you find, they are something you carve out, and you didn't try hard enough,' she snarled at him.
They were both standing now, glaring at each other; she seriously wondered if he was going to haul off and hit her. If the circumstances had been reversed, she would have been hard put not to.
She threw the data on the desk in front of him, and announced 'My letter of authority.'
That set it to display the authorisation, and he picked it up and read it - she could tell exactly when he got to the signature. He went visibly paler, slumped back into his chair and seemed to shrink slightly.
'That's it,' he said, broken-sounding, anger dissolved on a wave of hopelessness. 'End of a career, end of the dream. An agent of the privy council-what does he have against me?'
'Probably nothing personal, but one of the privileges of that rank is that they don't need reasons. You feel bad now? Think carefully - if you still do have anything worth living for, don't challenge him on it,' she advised him.
'Why me?' he said, still too depressed to try to be professional about it.
'You were unlucky enough to have a decent sized ship coming out of refit at exactly the time when I happened to need one. Look, I'm from Bya Amadi. A thousand years ago, someone tried to burn my home world with high speed kinetic missiles.
'We finally found the beings responsible; actually, I found them. There is no way I am going to be left out of that battle, no matter what I have to do or who I have to step on to be there, and Kor Alric respects vengeance as a motive. Enough to make me distinctly worried, actually, but this is the way it's going to be,' she said.
She paused for a moment, then, 'Do you want me to inform them?'
He stood up, ten years older than he had been that morning. 'No. No, I'll do it. I'll break the bad news.'
'I'll have your effects moved dockside,' she said, turning to go.
'You-' he hesitated. 'You will bring Hialaya Karu back in one piece?'
'Considering what the pursuit squadron's going up against, I wouldn't base your hopes on it,' she said.
Two hours later, the old crew were on board the dock, the new crew had moved in and Hialaya Karu disengaged from the dock, and "hoisted the pennant" - changed her transponder beacon to the tactical number 851-Yod-4-A.
'Any problems?' Dordd signalled across.
What to say? Did it matter? 'No, no problems. We were lucky; full stormtrooper complement, squadron of /ln and a squadron of Bombers.' And someone else's fortune stolen, but that was not his or her problem, now.
'Good,' Dordd said, so non-committally that she couldn't decide if he knew what had happened or not. 'We have three hours to put that ship through its paces, shake your crew down and make sure everything works as it's supposed to, then we proceed to rendezvous off Ord Corban to join the rest of the squadron. There is a target appreciation, but no formal battle plan - I believe Captain Lennart intends to fight an open, manoeuvring battle. The one thing I am sure of is that it is going to be a bloody day.'
Two fleet tankers had arrived at the lagrange point, and one commercial transport full of ferrocrete mix. Which was all well and good, as long as nobody got confused and pumped their fuel tanks full of cement.
Ten thousand seconds, that was all it took to burn an Imperator's fuel toruses dry. Black Prince had been modified in this, as in so many other things, but the installation of additional torii hadn't kept up with the increased power output.
On watch, managing the docking and transfer procedure, one of the junior officers from the navigation division. On call, Brenn. In the day cabin, don't call me unless the sky starts showing cracks, the captain getting some much needed rest.
In all cases, the more manoeuvrable ship moved to link up with the less manoeuvrable. So the tankers remained on station, and the warships moved to meet them. All the other ships of the squadron had more thrust than the fleet auxiliaries; they would all line up, one behind the other - not directly, of course.
Plug in, open the locks, cycle the hypermatter from the tanker to the destroyer, convince them that yes, they really did need that much. One tanker would be drained dry here and released to local control again, the other would accompany the squadron to the rendezvous point and top off Dynamic and Hialaya Karu.
The absence of any spoiling attack on the tankers was a good sign; it probably meant that the rebels were convinced that the forces of the Empire believed them to be long gone, or at least convinced enough to take the risk of hanging around a little longer, and making a planned withdrawal with as much machinery as possible.
Accidents and cockups, they were the problem now, for at least the next hour. The vibe had gone through the squadron, but somehow the tension had carried - there had been individual actions, exercise and preparation, but this was it. Everyone was keyed up, and right now would be just the time for someone to make a mistake.
Brenn was watching the rest of the squadron shuffle into an efficient stepped column, out of each other's ion flares, waiting for that mistake. Trying to catch it in time to do something about it.
They had tried not to select fools from the sector group, and had evidently not been entirely successful - there had been no time to replace Subtractor, and Guillemot's new captain was still an unknown quantity. Their replacement turret was a botch job, the best that could be done in the time but likely to fail under stress.
Voracious' crew was a problem. However high the individual standard was, they were not yet a team.
They were in line immediately behind Black Prince, because they would need time to separate out the fuel issued to them to the storage cell farm serving the flight line. Black Prince was first because she had most to take on, and then she could stand by and monitor the others, and use her tractor beams in case of that accident.
Brenn hoped Voracious' air group were putting in as much time as possible on their sims. They hadn't had a chance to exercise with the wing in its current composition at all.
Fortunately - or unfortunately - most of the requisitions to the sector group had gone through, with no more then the expected proportion of bureaucratic bungling.
Why? Surely the criminals in sector group would try to cross them up? Only two alternatives: either there were enough loyal men in the sector to obey the orders they received, or, in some more subtle way than a complete stonewall, they had set a trap.
Both tankers had been scanned to within an inch of their lives, looking for boobytraps or armed self destruct devices or any other explosive little present; the slicing team were working through their computers now, and they would dock once they were convinced there were no nasty surprises waiting there, either.
Amazing how well briefed the journalists were. Slightly less amazing than how amenable they were to discipline.
In theory, they should be rushing around, shoving lenses in people's faces, ignoring security, disrupting routine, being obnoxious, pushy and deceitful and generally doing whatever it took to get the story. A stormtrooper battle group put a significant crimp in their normal routine. Probably the only force that could.
Aleph-3's being appointed assistant press officer - Cat Herder In Chief as she put it - was another minor blessing. It kept her out of the skipper's hair for a while.
There were onboard romances, even thought there weren't really supposed to be. Prejudicial to good order. They never escaped notice, either; something would always be brought to official attention - apart from anything else out of sheer jealousy.
Officially, it was completely forbidden. On a small ship with a permanent base, convoy escort work and defence orbit, it was possible to have a home life, close enough to go home often enough to keep a partnership or a formal marriage alive.
Most ships weren't so lucky, and the divorce and separation rate for long haul patrol ships within a sector group was over sixty percent. For regional and strategic forces, which could be posted from one side of the galaxy to another at a moment's notice, ninety percent.
Small wonder that the men and women on board ship sometimes turned to each other. That usually made things worse. It put additional stress on the couple trying to make a home they shared with thirty-seven thousand other people, and they couldn't exactly move to a better neighbourhood. Most pairings - or, to be open minded, triplings and quadruplings - would break up under the stress of managing a relationship and doing their duty at the same time. One night stands and three day wonders weren't the answer either, because the misery, bad temper and occasional acts of stupidity caused by relationships breaking up were at least as much a problem.
Lennart did occasionally turn a blind eye when he thought that a particular arrangement was going to work out. Witness Aldrem who had, when the business was boiled down to its essentials, kidnapped a local woman and brought her back with him on a hijacked starship, and been rewarded for it by promotion to the officer class.
All right, that one was an exception. Still, the skipper seemed to enjoy making exceptions.
What most spacemen did, most spacewomen too, was have fun in port whenever they got the chance, and hold back the nesting instinct until their hitch was up and they could afford to settle down. Some of them never would; some would never leave the service, and some would lose the plot when released back to civil life. Brenn was nine years younger than his commanding officer, had been a child during, and mesmerised by the news of, the clone wars - the main reason he had joined the Starfleet, actually. Somehow, he had found himself staying in, and enjoying it.
Now, he was the captain's de facto left hand man and chief tactical deputy on one of the most active and most battle-honoured ships in the Starfleet. It was tiring and stressful, but there were millions of officers who would give at least a limb to be where he was. Maybe two.
What would I do with a warehouse full of right arms? he wondered, not seriously. Enough time to make solid plans once the real problem was out of the way.
Lennart…he would stay in. If he had enough commitment to stay in the Starfleet after being bust down to lieutenant from full commander, and then claw his way back, then he wouldn't retire. So he had to take his social life where he could find it. A warrant officer of the stormtrooper corps, though, that was not normal by anyone's standards. She was a problem, and she added to his problems. She took time, and energy, away from him that the ship needed, and she was mired in this business of the Force. Which was interesting to watch, in a beside the hospital bed kind of way.
The captain didn't seem to have changed much, but anyone who knew him could see the stress that refusing to change was placing on him. She, and the Force she was pushing on him, was endangering the rest of them through that. There were other reasons to dislike her, he was forced to admit, jealousy being one of them. If he hadn't been capable of looking coldly at his own motives then putting them aside to do the job, he wouldn't have been here.
Desire for advancement was one of them. If this operation was successful - if they could manage to make it successful, there was that, but he could daydream about the other side of the winning line for a second or four, couldn't he? - then the sector group would probably be in for major reconstruction.
A command of his own? Probable - assuming he chose to leave Region. Aiming slightly higher, he had some chance of inheriting the captain's chair on this ship, if Lennart ever did retire, or rather more likely was forced to hoist his flag.
Lennart knew he wanted that, and had no intention of retiring, so had tried to get him to accept command of a smaller ship now.
Behave, he told himself. Worrying about that now is like daydreaming of what a beautiful house it'll be once you glue the pile of bricks together. Assemble the future one brick at a time.
No-one had made any obvious mistakes - ships metres out of place, seconds late in getting there. That was just imprecise shiphandling, nerves, wouldn't be actively dangerous until their turn to dock, well within tractor tolerance anyway.
'Commander?' One of the oldest standing jokes in the Imperial fleet, a Voice from the Pit. Com-scan tech.
Brenn walked over to stand above the console.
'Tanker's as clean as can be expected; no boobytraps evident, physical or software, but as a fleet auxiliary that ship has various security measures, including a self destruct which could be kind of painful if it goes off while we're attached. Disable it?'
'Any sign that their IFF system considers us hostile?' Brenn asked.
'No, everything's clean there, but there's a manual override and we can't scan for crew intention. Not through hull metal, anyway,' the comtech advised.
'You can scan for hotel systems power loading, though,' Brenn said, meaning - do it. He was thinking of the Carrack over subsector command; subsequent analysis had shown that it had a skeleton crew on board, had been commanded by a small group of do-or-die fanatics in charge of a horde of droids.
'Slightly lean manned, ninety percent of complement,' the tech reported. 'Do you want us to do that hack, Sir?'
'Do it quietly, so they don't realise we don't trust them,' Brenn said.
'Can do, Sir,' the tech said, nodded to two of his trickmates.
'Ah…dreck. Commander, you may want to see this. IntSec issue,' Another voice from the other side of the pit.
Brenn moved over to that console, looked pointedly at the technician. 'Monitoring our systems, Sir, making sure they're not doing the same to us. Someone accessed Armoury Complex C1*4 twenty seconds ago, checked out a flamethrower and a heavy thermal detonator with the executive officer's access code.'
A heavy thermal detonator was the kind they used to kneecap AT-ATs. Wouldn't go through an armoured deck with the tensors up, but it surely would make a mess of the compartment it was initiated in.
Right now, Brenn wouldn't trust Mirhak-Ghulej with anything more dangerous than a rubber duck.
Complex C-1-star-4 wasn't a Legion facility, it was for crew use in the case of emergency, for defence against boarders and the like. There should have been a trooper detachment to monitor and secure - of course, they would have had to step aside for him.
Not being psychologically able to refuse orders and doubt the judgement of their superiors could be a real problem, even superiors that were known to be slightly mentally disturbed. But not carried on the books as such, not officially, so they had defaulted to that.
Now he had an area-effect, close quarters weapon, and a bomb. That choice in itself was a pretty good pointer to his intentions. Did the legion include such a thing as a hostage negotiation team? Destabilisation was probably the closest, and somehow he doubted that it was entirely appropriate. Mirhak-Ghulej already had been, that was why he was going to do something this stupid. Someone had to go and talk him down.
Why? Brenn asked himself. Why not let him go and blow himself up, and hopefully take out their second biggest problem in doing so? Because he was part of the team? In all honesty, no. Never was, never really had been, except in the warped sense that they needed someone within the fold, someone at arms' length to hate.
It probably wasn't going to work, that was one reason. Adannan would have to be stunningly arrogant not to already be on guard. Not giving him the satisfaction of killing a man, that was what it came down to.
Brenn was just trying to add up whether he could leave the refuelling operation in the hands of a senior lieutenant, when the day cabin door slid open.
Captain Lennart, uniform tunic flapping open over a dark grey undershirt, baggy pyjama pants and fluffy bunny slippers. He looked half-slept and unshaven, no surprise really because he was.
'Skipper, you had the Force a long time ago, either that or you have the entire ship wired for sound,' Brenn said.
'Just applied common sense. Nothing's happening, the rhythm is wrong,' Lennart said, waving an arm at the holodisplay showing the tanker, 'so I come and find you standing over an internal network station. Either we've been sliced or somebody's done something stupid. You're having to wonder what to do about it, so that makes it the latter. What happened?'
Brenn hesitated again, not wanting to say it out loud - knowing that if he did, it would become grade A prime triple distilled scuttlebutt within seconds. Lennart looked too tired to play games, though.
'It's Commander Mirhak-Ghulej. He's just signed out a flamethrower and a demolitions detonator.'
'Dreck,' Lennart said, and headed for the turbolift complex.
'Skipper, let someone else go and try to reason with him,' Brenn said. 'At least, have him shot and put out of his misery.'
'Another job I can't send anyone else to do. My fault anyway, I broke him,' Lennart said.
'You haven't told me what the smenge we're supposed to be doing. I don't know what the battle plan is. And he does have a bomb.'
'The documents are on file - and he may have a thermal detonator, but I have fuzzy feet,' Lennart said, glancing down.
'If he's reached the stage of contemplating murder-suicide, he's too far gone for surrealism,' Brenn cautioned. 'He never did have much of a sense of humour, anyway.'
'They're not for his benefit, they're for mine. Roust out, hmm, DF34 and tell them to meet me outside the Imperial suite.'
The unit he had named was part of the headquarters element, second batallion repulsor regiment - scouts used to thinking on their feet, not particularly heavily armed, but for this they shouldn't need to be. They met him in the corridor below the imperial suite, just outside the turbolift; Lennart over-rode access to the level above. His renegade exec would have to get out here, and face - what? What was it he was really trying to do? Talk the man down, or talk him into going through with it?
There were emergency access stairwells at both ends of the short corridor, and the scout platoon took up positions covering them; eminently grenadeable, but there wasn't much room to use to avoid that.
The first unwelcome visitor came down from the level above. It was the masked Givin of Adannan's retinue, wearing a thing clamped on to his head that looked like a torture device, but was probably a camera. As well. The scout team had not been given orders to stop him, although it would have been their first choice. They pointed their guns at him, but there was a commotion at the other stairwell.
Lennart caught the flash of a camera lens. Dreck. Then the lift door opened.
Mirhak-Ghulej was wearing a bathrobe and a loincloth. He had put on weight - comfort eating, and a man in his broken-minded state needed a lot of comforting. He stared wildly about him as he came out of the lift. Not now, Lennart thought, trying to resist the urgent pressure of the Force. The light side was urging him to talk Mirhak-Ghulej down, the dark side to blast him where he stood.
Thinking of both sides as actual personifications made them easier to deal with. He told them to sort it out between themselves and turned to his executive officer.
'I was trying to dress down, but it seems as if you beat me to it. Nice day to take a bomb for a walk.' Going to have to do this with an audience, he thought. All three of me.
'Hmwhuhah! Place. Time. You should know better than that,' Mirhak-Ghulej said. He sounded three-quarters mad, but the look in his eye was steady enough.
'We spit on any rational concept of place, we stretch time to fit. Both are what little blobs of mush choose to make of them, and it isn't right.'
'Is this an answer, is this a solution? Doing something as incredibly disorderly as blowing yourself up?' Lennart probed. He had gone to see Adannan, that much he knew, but whatever had been said to him, he had gone away and brooded on it and turned into this.
'Order? Don't use that word again,' Mirhak-Ghulej said, more of a plea than a demand. 'Never use that word again. There are no bridges over the screaming vortex! It's nothing but a tissue paper veil.
'What a joke to think that we could be stable in the madness and the lies. Nothing makes sense any more. It never had to, was never really supposed to. And I didn't know.' He showed no sign that he was aware of the minion, the film crew, and the stormtroopers.
'We tried to tell you often enough,' Lennart said, pitching his tone for calm assurance. 'The extreme disrespect many of the crew showed for your person and your views wasn't a hint? The example Gethrim and myself showed you gave nothing away?'
'Oh, those were kindly acts. They incarnated it all, helped me to take it personally and made me feel like a champion of good order and discipline. You used me to keep the illusion alive for everyone else,' he said, tone shifting to anger.
Was that thing armed? Lennart wondered. 'I hope you haven't lost it badly enough to think I shared that illusion.' Make it personal, he was thinking, engage with the bronze-faced madman. Let him turn on me, and if I can keep him talking, I can bring him down.
'You-you're the worst of the lot,' Mirhak-Ghulej said, leaning forward as if to peer at Lennart. 'The ambidextrous man, swearing to protect and defend the martyred innocents one minute, breaking bread with the murderers' guild the next.'
He would have shaken his finger at Lennart, if he hadn't been doing it with the hand that held the flamethrower.
Lennart didn't flinch. Mad dog, he was thinking, when dealing with a mad dog it is important not to show fear. Or, in this particular case, smugness.
'I can make some sense out of what you're saying, which under the circumstances worries me…care to talk about your latest meeting with the deputy poobah of the local guild chapter?'
'He showed me that-that I had been living a fraud of a life, in a cause which didn't really understand me at all. That there was a lie under all the truths. That I had been used and abused, and that I had helped break myself to the lies.'
'Most people do. It's common enough,' Lennart said.
'You mean what I'm doing fits a pattern?' Mirhak-Ghulej said, part of him pleased, part of him angry and the two falling out over it.
'Twenty-five thousand years?' Lennart said. 'How much time do you think they needed to work the patterns out? There are predictable rhythms in everything, contingencies and dependencies. There are patterns for how those patterns evolve, interact and change over time, patterns for how the patterns of change are expected to change - and so on ad absurdum.
'What difference do you think that ought to make?' Lennart said calmly, asking him to think, which he would hopefully do out loud.
'I know what difference it makes,' Mirhak-Ghulej wailed. 'It means that men without principle can use a man, identify what I care about and play me off it like a stimulus response machine.'
'What makes him less predictable than you?' Lennart asked. A lot of things, actually, training, upbringing, way too many personal psychological kinks. But the principle was there. 'You can play them, push their buttons just as they do to you, and who thinks first and fastest - as the Ubiqtorate say, Who Analyses, Wins. What else did you think he was going to do?' Lennart asked.
He could probably save Mirhak-Ghulej, at the price of some of his self respect and sanity. Both of their sanities, actually.
Using his former exec - no way anyone, even Lennart, could justify retaining him in that position now - as a kamikaze against Adannan probably wouldn't work, even though just maybe he might be able to swing it, afterwards.
'I thought he was an agent of the privy council,' Mirhak-Ghulej said, 'A being of order and discipline. I found a licensed pirate, a gargoyle, a man - if the term stretches -'
'It does,' Lennart interrupted, but Mirhak-Ghulej kept going.
'-who would patent a system for stealing red-hot stoves. Do you know how he plans to use you?'
'I have an idea,' Lennart said, thinking fast about how to phrase it. Would it serve to appear the kind of man who could pose a credible threat to Adannan, which meant being almost as cruel and devious? Was, for that matter, Kor Alric listening in himself? Almost certainly, at least by camera and probably by telepathy. Hmm.
Another thing that it would be distinctly bad to say - provided he doesn't use you as a weapon against me. Thinking too hard on that issue might just convince Mirhak-Ghulej to let that bomb go after all.
Adannan would have a win-win set up here if he, Lennart, wasn't careful. By making me move to stop one of my own officers from blowing Alric up, Lennart thought, I'm catching the bullet for him, in effect.
If I have to have him killed, well, there it is. He's set up me murdering one of my own officers - what a breach of the sense of community that holds us together. If I manage to talk him down, then death might be just as certain, following prolonged legal dissection. An attempted assassination of a high official would have to go to court, probably with Adannan prosecuting.
Summary judgement wouldn't rub enough salt in the wound, this would be done with the full travesty of the law. Adannan could use his authority to declare himself a superior court, but Lennart didn't think he would. More fun this way. If they weren't trying a cloud of vapour, that was.
'I also have a plan to protect myself,' Lennart continued, 'that doesn't involve measures quite this drastic.' Which was a flat out lie, considering the fallback emergency plan of signalling Dynamic to open fire on the bridge tower.
'Something's wrong. Everything's wrong, but something is very wrong,' Mirhak-Ghulej said. 'You're not angry enough. Boom, and a big red smear all over your record. You're not taking this seriously.'
'I reckon you're just about angry enough at the universe for both of us,' Lennart said, quietly. 'My career's survived worse - and do you have any idea about the blast radius of that thing?' He decided to be flippant about it. 'If I do get vapourised I won't exactly be in shape to worry about it, so what the smenge.'
'You're just as bad,' Mirhak-Ghulej screamed. 'No respect for truth, stability, discipline. Neither do I anymore,' he said, peculiarly - he so desperately wanted to be wrong. 'It's all fakery, it's how they pirate us, steal us from our own selves.'
How much damage do I have to do to his self respect, Lennart wondered. A broken man with nothing left might just let that bomb go. As it possible to slingshot past this and build him back up again?
'You're really only just working this out? Only losing your political virginity now, of all times?' he said.
'Everyone else feels like this?' Mirhak-Ghulej said. 'Abandoned, betrayed, lied to?'
'The situation's the same,' Lennart admitted. 'How hard you take it depends on how much faith you had in your sociopolitical superiors to start with. You must have been much more confident in society than I ever was.'
'But…' Mirhak-Ghulej gestured upwards with the flamer. 'He doesn't shock you? You don't find him an abomination?'
'If I do, it's not for the same reasons. And do remember who Kor Alric works for.'
A straight warning not to commit lese-majeste would lead Mirhak-Ghulej into direct insult. Lennart let that go for the moment, but added 'And who you were supposed to be working for - which happens to be me.'
'You cast me out!' Mirhak-Ghulej shouted at him. 'You led me on and you cast me out.'
'I expected you to help my crew deal with the truth, not to ram the lie down their throats. You were committed, a true believer - that's why you had so far to fall,' Lennart said.
'I thought at first you were playing the game in your own way, dealing with the truth, paying society its due and taking what you could get, but then you made it spectacularly obvious that you weren't.' Why are you dealing with, why are you trying to save this ridiculously broken man? The Force whispered in his ear.
Because he's my fault, at least in part. With more time, I could have fixed him. As it is, I wish the Force really was like duct tape. Or I could do projective telepathy well enough to tell Gethrim to get ready with the ray shields.
'This, though,' Lennart continued out loud, 'this is no solution, it's the end of all potential, forfeit of any chance to make good what you've lost and make sense of what happened.'
'I'm a lost cause,' Mirhak-Ghulej wailed. 'The jokes, the sneers, the slime, the hazing, an endless stream of little hateful things to mock a man who had nothing, only a con trick to live by. You kicked me when I was down, and I don't want to live anymore.'
He was perilously close to pushing the button, Lennart realised, within one or two twists of the knife of wiping himself out.
What effect would shooting a thermal detonator with a blaster have? Set to stun? DEMP weapon? Much easier to shoot the man. From the strictly naval point of view, it didn't really matter - he was unlikely to ever get it back together enough to be allowed to serve again, even if he wanted to.
The part about the black mark on his record was true enough, though not of overriding importance right now. The fact that it probably wasn't going to work did. What the kriff kind of shape will he be in, even if I do pull him back from the brink? Lennart thought.
'Look. Vasimir. I suppose you could call me a chaotic constructionist. I believe in making and building, in creation and growth, and I've been exceptionally lucky to find and keep a job that lets me commit so much high-yield violence in a good cause. I don't want to let you make a nothing of yourself. I had you sidelined because I wanted you to change and grow - I thought that anybody in your position with your record had to be doing more than hanging on by his fingernails, I didn't realise how much support you needed. Neither did you.
'He knows he got to you, he's waiting for this, and I think he's faster, and nastier, than you are. I don't think you can kill him faster than he can kill you. Let someone he isn't expecting, doing something he can't foresee and hasn't set up, take care of him. You might as well live for the time being.'
Mirhak-Ghulej seemed to be listening. Lennart continued, 'Come on. You've done enough, you've taken a stand, you've got this far. Let someone else help you and take it the rest of the way.'
This had not been a cry for help, he had intended to go through with it, but under the drained hope, not daring to express itself, that there might be a way back.
'You're serious? You promise?' Mirhak-Ghulej said. Was it possible he was faking it? Nobody could sound that much like a five year old boy and mean it, not unless - well, he was too far gone to fake it. Probably was that damaged. This is the tipping point, Lennart thought.
'Considering what I'm up against, considering what he did to you,' Lennart stopped himself before he could say 'Don't worry, I'll fix the bastard.' He could. Had to.
Had every intention of doing so, for his own and the ship's reasons, but to say so out loud would constitute an open, public-record declaration of feud against his constitutional superior and a man of some potency in the Force. Suicidally dangerous.
On the other hand, to claim he couldn't do it - melting was not in the game plan, either.
Trying to talk to him at all was the high risk option, once begun no way back - this had to work. Make that promise and the response might just be, 'Let's go do it now.' Crap, I hated the dramatics society.
'What can I do? He has his authority to use as a weapon, legal power and the power of the dark side, and no remorse at all for the damage he does. What can I, what can any ordinary man do in the face of that?'
The Givin's face creased under the mask, as he realised that Lennart had accepted Adannan's challenge on Adannan's terms - it would take an extraordinary man, a wielder of the Force.
For Mirhak-Ghulej, the tone was pitched perfectly, one of baffled, helpless anger, pitch perfect brick wall at the end of the line, because his carved bronze face wrinkled up, and he started to cry.
Lennart grabbed him and hugged him, as two of the scouts ran to snatch up the exec's weapons and take them away.
'I'll find a way,' Lennart whispered to him, and two more scouts came to take the shaking, drained body of the exec. 'Take Commander Mirhak-Ghulej down to medical, tell them I said they were to help him.'
Lennart was almost sure he heard one of the scouts mutter 'What, euthanasia?' under his helmet, but now that the crisis was past, he had to rein in the flow of anger that followed it. That Givin; how good he would look with that thing on his head smashed in, and twitching on the deck. I will not do it, Lennart told himself, I will not give him an excuse.
That and the thought occurred to him that Adannan had had the minion effectively staked out here, in order to give him an excuse, and he regarded his own people as sacrificable because he intended to replace them with better, chosen from his apprentice's ship's crew.
The journalists started towards him, but for once in their lives, self preservation over-rode the instinct to get the story at all costs. If they had tried shoving a microphone in his face at this point, he would have found out exactly what he could do with the dark side of the Force.
They kept the camera on him, but had the sense not to say a word.
On the main bridge and back in the captain's chair, in something more closely resembling uniform, Lennart first called up every display he could think of and sat drinking the information in.
This is what I am, he thought self-consciously, repeating it like a mantra. A naval officer, not a psychiatrist, not a paralegal Force-fueled vigilante, not, I hope, a monster, just the commander of a starship about to commit to battle.
Fueling complete; one point four five billion tons on board. The other ships of the squadron, ready. Everyone knew what had happened, knew he did not want to talk about it.
'General announcement, all ships of the squadron;' the com team set it up. More than a few of them were in dress uniform. It was going to be a big day, one way or the other. Even Lennart, although he still had the fuzzy feet on.
'We have three, possibly four battles to fight. Our first target is Ord Corban. Long range scan indicates the rebels have taken the chance on a slow evacuation, taking as many machine tools as possible. This is what I wanted to happen.
'Jump to a point off, bow-shock tactics, and RV with Dynamic and Hialaya Karu. Then Black Prince and the rest of the strike line, less Dynamic and Perseverance and plus Blackwood, will make a recon-in-force approach to the target. If we are lucky enough to catch them at anchor, so much the better, but I expect a double or triple layer vectored ambush, they have a base station there after all, and intend a two or three phase entry.'
'I have confidence in my own ship's ability to survive under fire, so Black Prince will enter first and relay navigation data back to the RV point. Structure works for them, chaos works for us. I want a running, moving battle - the planet won't go anywhere, so any damage doable to it in the initial stages is a bonus, but the prime target is rebel fleet assets. All the hyper capable fighters and small craft will be going in in the first wave also. Open formation, open order, commit all combat small craft on entry, stand ready to receive tactical direction from your line leaders and the Flag.
'First nav point and codes of the day downloading to you now, so, ladies and gentlemen, in the name of the peace of the galaxy and the glory of the empire, let us exercise our vocation and commit to battle.'
Turning to his navigator, Lennart said, 'Let's go. No sense keeping destiny waiting.'