Royal Council Chamber, Tarkin Tower, Culter City, Mars
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"Pirates!" Emperor Yos bellowed a second time.
First Lieutenant Murp from the SigInt station of Naval Intelligence started to read off a litany of a dozen attacks by at least three separate pirate gangs in the past two weeks.
Normally pirate activity would be below the notice of the Emperor but the threat had put a damper on plans for colony ships to start leaving the local Sol System. Two of the latest attacks were highly disconcerting. A crew of what was believed to be Rodians hit a supply freighter on its way to the new colony on Earth 2, while a second attack of unknown origin had damaged the tibanna processing station on Earth 5.
"We still don't have any indication as to what the Earth 5 pirates' target was. They retreated from the area before Imperial Navy vessels arrived to intercede." The naval officer reported.
"And where were the Star Destroyers tasked with defending Earth 5?" Yos asked in irritation.
"My Lord, the VISD Charger is currently at the KDY orbital driveyard where they are provisioning their bunkers with the first load of hypermatter from the Mars Tower processing facility."
Yos bit the inside of his lip. He had personally issued the order for the Charger to be the first vessel to receive hypermatter. He had worried about the StarGate currently on its way to Epsilon Eridani and he wanted a quick reaction vessel if the exploratory scouts ran into any trouble beyond the local system. Moff Seco had protested that he needed every warship under his command for this 'Surge' of his that was aimed at ending hostilities on Earth. Against his better judgment he had pulled the Victory-class Star Destroyer from her station, and now pirate scum were reaping the benefits of his poor decision.
"During the attack the other vessel in the immediate area, the IntSD Immobile was in orbit around Earth 5's largest moon. Her captain never received a request for assistance from the Ugnaughts in charge of the facility. By the time they realized anything was happening the facility was already damaged and the pirate scum had hauled jets back into the Phasma Belt."
Yos stood up and crossed the circular briefing room. He came to a stop at the wall of the balcony that ringed the top of the tallest structure in Culter City. He looked across the red-tinged capital city of his Empire. From this height he could imagine his problems as tiny as lizard-ants, but even he knew a colony of a million tiny lizard-ants could take down the largest full-grown being.
"The Immobile is one of Kuat's 3rd Kuati Fleet is it not?" Yos thought aloud.
"Yes, My Lord." Murp answered. "The Interdictor-class vessel has been on station around Earth 5 since the current hostilities commenced against the local system's inhabitants."
"I believe I made a mistake in trusting the Kuati with such an important task. Moff Kuat surely shows no interest in the performance of his own fleet. The governor prefers to concentrate his attention on scientific advancement rather than protecting the interests of the Empire." Yos said.
"He has given us thousands of advances since we arrived in the Milky Way. I don't think his efforts have been in vain, in fact I . . ."
Yos spun around and angrily stared the intelligence agent into silence. "Anything that slows the spread of our colonization efforts from this system goes against the desires of the Empire. We have enough hindrance in our true goal with this slave raid we're doing on Earth." Yos could tell the younger officer wanted to object but the irritation showing in Yos's features stilled his tongue. "Too many resources that could better be served elsewhere. Yes, I know we need the raw manpower those slaves are providing but even that has slowed down due to the Ebola scare."
"Sir, we have been assured by the Martian Medical Corps that the danger of another outbreak has subsided. No one has reported any symptoms inside of Camp 1138 for two weeks and workers are returning to the terraforming and agricultural work sites as we speak."
Yos thought about that. He couldn't deny that the massive slave army wasn't producing results. Foodstuffs and ore were flooding into the city from work sites around Mars. He hardly thought of the hundreds of thousands of Earthlings who had been literally worked to death at those labor sites, choking out their last breaths on red dust as they stared up at a greenish blue light in the night sky that they'd never return to again.
Sometimes he wished he had gone the Separatist route and built an army of labor droids instead. But the sheer cost of manufacturing droids was staggering. And where would he have found the labor force to build them in the first place? Earth had made everything so accessible with its primitive defenses and backrocket thinking. He had been in the Empire long enough to consider the thousand stormtroopers or so they had lost so far a small price to pay for results.
"Continue to scan for signs of Earth-borne disease amongst the prisoner population. The last thing we need is a plague. Are shipments from Operation Piper still on hold?" Yos asked. He rubbed the exhaustion from his eyes slowly with his right hand and wished it would be so easy to wipe away the stress from his life.
"Aye, Your Majesty. But the Ebola ban has been lifted and approved by all three Moffs and the Bureau of Operations. New shipments haven't renewed due to the 'Surge' attacks out of both Target Cities. Moff Seco stripped the Piper units to only a single Legion. The rest are being used in the attacks."
"Yes, Admiral Bacara gave me an earful over the matter. He's furious that we're using his clone brothers as shock troops." Yos sighed. Before the war had begun he had given the clone admiral his assurance that his Legions of Clone War troopers wouldn't be thrown away as Palpatine had done after the old War had ended. He felt a twinge of guilt but forced himself to shake it off. What other choice did he have? This new war had gone on for much too long. It needed to end soon.
"Those clones have got to be in their fifties with their advanced aging. Feels like we're sending out my father or my grandfather to fight. No offense, My Lord." the Lieutenant caught himself.
Yos snorted. He was in his mid-sixties. Old-age by Earth's lower standards but comfortably late middle-aged by the Home Galaxy's measures. The one thing that surely made him feel ancient was raising a twelve year old daughter. At a time when most fathers were contemplating buying their youngling a new landspeeder or saving for academy tuition he was focusing on ways to expand the Empire he would one day bequeath to her.
All he did was for Phasma. Every day she looked more and more like her clone template, her mother, as he and Phasma referred to her in public whenever the matter arose. Phasma Yos certainly embodied the values that Padme had championed during the Clone War but she was also her father's daughter and a product of the Old Empire. She would make a strong leader one day, he told himself. Now his only goal was to leave her an Empire that was worthy of Padme. No, he checked his thoughts, worthy of Phasma.
"We need every man we can get to end this charade of a war. How many troopers does Bacara still have under his command for Piper and Stork?" Yos asked. He once again contemplated wiping Earth out with a Base Delta Zero so they could get on with the more pressing matters of colonizing this new galaxy. But it all came back to manpower. Tarkin's Fist had recently celebrated the birth of its fourteen millionth citizen. A pitiful number to rule a system, let alone a galaxy.
"Just one oversized Legion. The 212th Attack Legion, My Lord. A Clone Wars' unit under command of CC-2224, um, Clone Marshall Commander Cody. They're currently holding the north island of a nation called New Zealand and are subduing a local rebellion." Murp recited from his datapad.
"Excellent. Have Captain Dual of the Bureau restart very limited Piper operations in that area. No need to take resources away from Seco's Surge. Just enough to offset losses from our own labor pool here on Mars. Also tell Yutu that we need a new source of labor units. See if he can identify any Terran nation at the verge of breaking. If he finds a suitable target then my directive is to lean on them to do our work for us and deliver us the necessary labor or perish under the turbolasers of Tarkin's Fist."
"Aye, aye My Lord." Murp entered a series of commands into his datapad as Yos studied the cityscape below him.
Yos looked up into the midday sky and smiled. Catching the local sun's distant rays was the gray outline of Kuat's massive KDY driveyard. He didn't have any trouble finding it as a steady stream of shuttles ferrying workers and supplies traveled between the orbiting shipyard and Culter City.
His eyes made out the elongated shape of the keel and superstructure of the vessel undergoing construction alongside the driveyards. The next class of Star Destroyer for the Imperial Navy wouldn't be completed for at least another two years but when it was the Ares would certainly strike fear and unleash death into the hearts of anything that challenged the 1st Martian Empire. It warmed his heart to know that Phasma's Empire would be secured by his foresight to construct such might.
He strained his eyes to make out the shape of the Tchun-Tchin, the next colony ship that was nearing completion in the driveyards. Moff Culter had already started to load the vessel with stasis vats filled with newly cloned Twi'lek. Those newly flash-trained terraformers were meant for the colonization of the world the StarGate was heading for in the nearby Epsilon Eradini system. The delivery of hypermatter would allow the Tchun-Tchin to leave Mars and catch up to the exploratory vessel in a matter of hours. His Empire would spread out of the local system in less than a year, he thought, silently congratulating himself.
"Your Majesty." One of his many secretaries vied for his attention from the inside of the briefing room. The junior officer appeared shaken to be addressing the Emperor. Used to too many years on the deck of one Star Destroyer or another, Yos hardly had time for such nonsense.
"What is it, Man? I don't have all day."
"I'm sorry to interrupt, My Lord, but Daggibus Nalas would like to meet with you concerning an urgent matter." The nervous aide reported. "He is awaiting you at the Royal Planetarium."
That got Yos's attention. Nalas was one of the chief planetologists who had come through the 'big jump' under Moff Kuat's patronage. Currently the Givin astronomer was head of special projects for the Martian Ministry of Space. But before their exodus he had been Prime Astrogator for his home world of Yag'Dhul. If not for Kuat's recruitment of the top minds in the Home Galaxy Yos was sure that Nalas would happily be back home charting new hyperlanes for the Old Empire through the Inner Rim.
"Lieutenant Murp, does Captain Yutu have anything else for you to report?"
"No, My Lord."
"Then inform Yutu and Captain Dual to recall the Star Destroyers Flood and Slash from their duties around Earth and order them to take up station in the Phasma Belt. I need trustworthy Subterrel Squadron captains to maintain anti-piracy patrols to ensure colonization efforts are not diminished in any capacity. Do you understand?"
"Yes, My Lord. It shall be done at once." Murp responded.
"Excellent. You are dismissed."
The intelligence agent snapped his heels together and thrust out his arm in the Imperial military salute instead of bowing at the waist. "Hail the Empire."
"Hail." Yos responded by raising his empty right hand outwards and bending his arm at the elbow as he had seen Palpatine perform on the HoloNews of the Home Galaxy. He hated the Old Emperor for the purges of the Navy after the Clone War yet mimicked his old Master down to the smallest nuance and behavior.
Lieutenant Murp spun around and left the balcony, no doubt in a hurry to return to Fleet Intelligence's SigInt station fifty floors below.
"Shall I send for your shuttle, Your Majesty?"
Yos inhaled a large breath of warm, spring-like air. Sol was beating down on the Martian capital today, driving away the normally chilly local breeze.
"On such a fine day I think I will walk. My old legs could use a stroll. And as you have said, Nalas is only across the way at the Palace." Yos said.
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"Sergeant," Yos called for the commander of the Royal Guardsmen detachment that was serving as his bodyguards today.
A blue armored Guardsman responded immediately, emerging from inside the briefing room. The NCO held his forcepike at attention and saluted by thumping his closed fist upon his chest plate.
"Sergeant, turn out your men. We will be walking back to the palace." Yos said.
The trooper said nothing in response but instead dropped the salute and returned to the briefing room. Yos had no doubt he was giving his squad of men orders via the comlinks in their helmets. When he followed a moment later a dozen blue-armored Guardsmen awaited him in formation inside the chamber while another squad stood at the ready out in the hallway.
Yos left the aide behind on the balcony. "At your leave, Sergeant." Yos said magnanimously. The first squad of troopers entered the turbolifts and disappeared. A second later Yos and the Guardsman Sergeant entered his personal lift. Yos assumed the rest of the squad would follow on the next available turbolift.
The doors opened a half minute later to the coordinated chaos of the main lobby of the military command center of Tarkin's Fist. Uniformed beings of dozens of species and military branches moved with urgent precision to carry out their orders. Several beings near the turbolifts noticed the Emperor's arrival and snapped to attention.
The normal noise and commotion of the lobby dwindled into silence as the two squads of Royal Guardsmen led the way two-by-two through the military throng. Officers by the score scurried out of their way.
A pair of Naval Troopers held the heavy transparisteel doors open as Yos and his escort passed out into the hustling Tarkin's Square, the heart and center of the new metropolis. The grand thoroughfare separated the military headquarters from the royal palace. Though closed to landspeeder traffic a large amount of airspeeders still flashed by in the skylanes high above. Foot traffic consisted of thousands of office workers. Some crossed the plaza, where they were entertained by street performers and musicians, while others grabbed a mid-day meal from scattered vendor droids around the square.
With the two dozen Royal Guardsmen surrounding him it was impossible not to go unnoticed. Beings of various species stopped and pointed at their Emperor as he made this rare public appearance. Several younglings waved a greeting as their guardians gave a proper bow as he passed by. Yos nodded and smiled at the little ones. They were the bright future of his Empire, after all.
A small flock of begging Manollium birds scattered at the approach of the blue Guardsmen, their honks and chirps echoing off the being-made canyons around him as they fluttered off towards the nearby Yos River. The waterway was yet another sign that Moff Culter's terraforming efforts had taken hold on the red planet.
Mid-way across the square Yos noticed they were approaching some type of gathering. His security escort slowed, along with his pace, to study the small crowd. A pair of red-armored Culter City Guard had been leaning against a fountain nearby. When they spotted their Emperor they suddenly looked more attentive to the potentially subversive scene.
A bearded, portly human male was standing on some type of make-shift stand and orating to a small crowd of thirty or so lunchtime bystanders. The speaker had several assistants who were either holding long staves topped with some kind of mashed-up aurabesh vev and trill or were holding large flimsiplast signs. Yos read the poorly written aurabesh scrawling on the signs with some confusion.
"The kingdom of heaven is within you- Luke 17:20"
"John 3:16"
"We believe that through the grace of Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved." Another sign said.
Yos noted a few other beings handing out small flimsiplast pamphlets to the crowd. He thought it strange that despite the number of aliens in the audience all of the members of this small group seemed to be humans. Maybe they are a family, he told himself.
The speaker seemed to spot him with his Guardsmen as they came to the rear of the crowd. The man's tone changed and he swept his arm in Yos's direction. "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's."
Several beings in the crowd nodded in agreement, though Yos wondered if any of them knew what a 'Caesar' was. He certainly didn't have the first clue.
At the mention of a 'God' Yos immediately identified them as members of another crackpot cult that had made it through the 'big jump' along with the rest of them. He looked around at the mixed beings in the gathering and wrote them off as suckers that were born every minute. The pair of CCG troopers started dispersing the obnoxious sermon's audience.
He motioned for the sergeant to join him as they passed by the crowd. "Ever hear of that group before, Sergeant?"
"No, My Lord. They don't look like any group I've ever come across but there were at least a billion so-called Gods in the Outer Rim alone." The Sergeant's voice sounded mechanical from behind his visor.
"The mention of Heaven on that one sign made them sound almost Corellian. I wonder who this Lord Jesus Christ is?" Yos wondered aloud.
"I know of no noble by that name. Perhaps that's their God's name. Probably some whack-job, Sorcerer of Tund-type from the Tingel Arm that propped himself up as a tin-wizard on some CSA backrocket planet."
"Perhaps so. Besides the Jedi who has ever heard of a religion causing anyone much grief anyways?"
"They are beneath your notice, My Lord."
Yos figured the NCO was right. So many religions, sects and cults existed in the Old Empire it was near impossible to keep track of them all. Some, like the religion of the Corellians, was far flung across space due to the Corellians' natural tendency for becoming spacers but most were localized on a single planet or moon. The Old Empire only ever admitted to being threatened by the Jedi cult, and those had been nearly wiped out during the purge.
He wondered if he should put more effort in following up on the rumors that a Jedi might be hiding somewhere among the populace of Tarkin's Fist. He certainly wasn't threatened by the presence of a Force-user the way Palpatine was, more curious about how he could exploit the Jedi for the New Empire's gain.
His mind returned to matters at hand as he entered the gates of the Imperial Martian Palace. At once, Imperial banners outside the palace went to their full height to mark that the regent was in residence.
Besides the Sergeant, who left his side to follow a few meters behind the Emperor, the other two squads of Guardsmen vanished in the blink of an eye. He wasn't surprised; the Palace contained dozens of secret passageways that the Imperial Guard as well as the servicebeings of the palace used to remain unseen.
He quickly swept through the Hall of Wonders, where clari-crytalline sculptures took the shapes of achievements left behind in the Old Empire: The Shawken Spire, the Imperial Palace on Imperial Center, The Dawn Pyramid of Aargau, the Cathedral of the Winds, and a completed rendition of Tarkin's Death Star, amongst several others. With cheap slave labor from Earth Yos hoped to one day rebuild them all.
He passed into the Royal Gardens where two young boys were playing a game of limmie with a gold protocol droid and several of the palaces servants. The servants and the droid stopped the game and bowed at Yos as he went past. The two younglings just stared in awe at Yos and his personal Guardsman.
Griffon and Cameron Harris, the two younglings of the President of the NAU, were his guests in name if not hostages in reality. So far their father hadn't offered his own surrender in exchange for his family's release. Yos wondered where their mother was today. Jill Harris had been seen spending quite a bit of time with his daughter, Phasma. Yos wondered if he should be concerned that Phasma might be learning any undesirable Earth habits from the near-human prisoner.
His worries were forgotten a moment later as he entered the Royal Planetarium at the back of the Gardens. He had built the structure to be his personal nerve center in his quest to expand the Martian Empire as quickly and widely as possible.
Several hyperlane scouts and astronavigators were spread amongst the holomaps of star systems around the room. They were eagerly trying to map out routes to new systems that they would no doubt haul jets to the instant hypermatter was available to them. Yos didn't even pretend he would be able to control all of them but he understood that in the end their private efforts would aid the Empire. After all, Mars was the only safe haven these spacers knew in the Milky Way.
He spotted Daggibus Nalas standing beneath the room's centerpiece, a massive bronzium sculpture in the shape of the local system's major planets. The different pieces of the sculpture rotated in orbit around an alumabronze rendition of the star Sol.
Nalas was hard to miss. Like most of the Givin species he had hard, pale skin and sunken black eyes, which gave him a skeletal appearance. Nalas held his arms out straight in front of him in the Given fashion, which gamade him look even more like a ghoul.
Yos hurried to the scientist, readying himself for the inevitable quadratic equation that all mathematically-minded Givin used as a greeting. Nalas dropped to one knee as Yos came up before him.
"Rise, Daggibus. I understand you have something to tell me." Yos said, awaiting Nalas's math problem which never came.
Nalas remained where he was, refusing to meet Yos's gaze. Instead the Givin appeared nervous. This intrigued Yos even more since he had never seen one of the skeletal 'string puppets' show any sort of emotion.
"My Lord, I have found it." Nalas whispered.
Yos's heart seemed to jump out of his chest. Two years ago he had assigned Daggibus an almost impossible task. A task Yos had secretly hoped the Givin would fail at. But somehow he had succeeded.
"Everyone out!" Yos shouted.
He stood staring at the silent, kneeling figure for a moment as all the scouts and explorers left the chamber. The last to leave was his Royal Guard Sergeant, who closed the secured doors to the planetarium with a loud clang that echoed through the chamber.
"Is it far, far away?" Yos asked at last.
Nalas looked up. "I would say it was beyond our reach but our very presence here proves that it is not so."
"Rise, and show me what you've discovered." Yos said. The anxiety had already started to build inside his core. He feared everything he had begun with Tarkin's Fist was suddenly endangered.
The Givin came to his feet and walked over to one of the large holoprojectors in the chamber. He inserted a datapad into the control console of the machine. Immediately the holoimage of the Milky Way Galaxy came to life above them. The swirling image grew until it encompassed both of the men, who circumnavigated the image until they found the tiny Sol System.
"As you know, My Lord, the Milky Way is a barred-spiral galaxy spanning a hundred thousand to a hundred twenty thousand light years, and containing what we and the local Terrans estimate at two hundred to six hundred billion stars. It has fourteen discovered satellite companion galaxies. It is estimated to contain fifty million orbiting planets with about twice the amount of free floating worlds as there are stars." Nalas started.
Yos was appreciative that he didn't go into the math of all of it. "All and all, a pretty average galaxy."
"Precisely, and what you had me looking for was equally average in the scheme of things. A thirty-seven parsec wide target with seven companions from Aurek to Grek. With an immense black hole at the center and a spiral arm encircling it."
"Go on." Yos knew the target well.
"I began my search in the Local Group of galaxies that has its gravitational center midway between the Milky Way and what the Terrans dubbed the Andromeda Galaxy. They have over thirty companion galaxies between them." The holomap panned around them to a distance that showed the galaxies in question. Yos spotted even more on the periphery of the swirling holographic image around him.
Nalas continued his lecture. "Some of the galaxies presented a degraded declination or right ascension that they couldn't rightfully be ruled out as our target. I was fortunate in discovering that at least one third of the nearest hundred or so galaxies presented declinations around ninety degrees."
Yos could tell the Givin was starting to drift towards a trigonometry lesson. "So you were able to tell what type and shape they were in roughly."
"More or less, My Lord. Most of them were eliminated as potential candidates simply by their size or a lack of a central singularity at their center."
"So where is it?" Yos turned around trying to identify the celestial body he had hoped to never set eyes upon again.
"Your forgiveness, My Lord. I took much too much time eliminating the companion galaxies to Andromeda and the Milky Way that it took me some time to set my eyes on these candidates. Immediately two of the galaxies in the local group glowed brighter than the rest. "The first is the Pinwheel Galaxy in the Ursa Major Constellation. I had high hopes for this SAB type system, but in the end I ruled it out due to its immense size. My calculation put her at fifty thousand light years larger than what you had me searching for."
"So you moved on?"
"Yes, almost too fast. I made the mistake of using stolen astrological data taken from the Terrans. That data presumed that this galaxy," The remaining galaxy turned a bright green, "The Triangulum Galaxy in the Triangulum Constellation was only fifty light years in diameter. But as I learned from my own father, a tailor on Yag'Dhul, 'measure twice, cut once' I did my own equations and discovered that the Terrans used sloppy math. This galaxy is actually one hundred and twenty thousand light years across."
Nalas pushed a button on the holoprojector and the Triangulum Galaxy jumped to the size of a good sized wampa. Yos sucked in a sharp breath. Since his first days as a cadet at the Naval Academy on Anaxes he had studied star charts. Everything he had seen in those maps were all part of the highly familiar shape that floated before him now.
The Home Galaxy. Home of the 1st Galactic Empire. Home of Palpatine, Tarkin, and Vader. Home of the dreaded Imperial Security Bureau. Home of the mysterious rebellion and the undefeated Imperial Navy. The Emperor fought the urge to immediately recall all four naval squadrons around Earth and encircle Mars in a protective ring of heavy turbolasers.
"Are you certain?" Yos asked. Yos had stared at the image enough that he knew without a doubt that it was the galaxy of his birth. He only asked because he had to hear it verified aloud by another being.
"It is a ninety three point six percent certainty." The Givin answered. "There are some discrepancies."
"Such as?"
"Well there is the question of how we traveled here from there. The Triangulum is three million light years away. No vessel I know of carries enough hypermatter for such a voyage, nor could any crew survive such a lengthy journey. There's also the matter of the hyperspace disturbance and . . ."
Yos cut him off, "But you're certain that's home?"
"I have been doing the math for five straight weeks. It is with some shame that I had to consult a highly upgraded navicomputer to make some of my calculations."
Well, that was something, Yos thought. Yos knew it was only with great hesitation that a Givin put any trust in a computer. Their species preferred their own minds to those of droids. It must have been a huge concession for Nalas to even admit such a thing. "What did you and your navi discover?"
"Well there certainly had to be some accountability for drift and rotation, but by using a primitive Earth method based on studying star's gravitational wobble for detecting exoplanets, as well as using the 'transit' method where a star losses its brightness when a planet moves in front of it, I ruled that the majority of worlds in the Home Galaxy are where they should be. Even your home world of Denon and my own Yag'Dhul. Some, however, seem to have vanished completely."
Yos was relieved to hear that Denon still existed. Planets got obliterated every year by asteroids or supernovas, so he wasn't surprised to hear there had been some cosmic real estate changes. "Like who?"
"Andra, Ova, Carida," Yos raised an eyebrow at the mention of the Imperial training planet, "Hirsi, Krinemonen, Sernpidal, Tandum III, Byss,"
"Byss! Palpatine's hidden redoubt? That is disturbing. I wonder if Old Palps was there."
"I do not know the circumstances of its disappearance only that it is no longer where it should be. Amongst some of the other missing planets are Da Soocha V, Bedara, Aeten II, Alderaan," Just kriffing great Yos thought. He had a lot of servicemen and women that hailed from Alderaan. What kind of disaster had made it through her planetary shields he wondered.
"Also disturbing was the absence of any sign of Desparye." Nalas concluded his short list. Yos looked at the datapad in the Givin's hand and noted that it was much longer than the one Nalas had recited.
"Desparye? The starting point for the slave-rigged 'big jump'. Do you suppose we had anything to do with its disappearance? That jump must have contained an unheard of amount of energy to propel us this far."
"It is rumored that Moff Kuat was conducting experiments on gravitic polarization during the events that led us on this far-flung exodus. Theoretically, if used incorrectly, my calculations suggest such power could create a hyperspace wormhole." Nalas suggested.
Yos scowled. He remembered quite clearly the arguments he had had with the Kuati Governor shortly before the the slave-rig was engaged. There's no stopping science, the Kuati had vehemently declared as they prepared to set off for the maw. Yos had never been able to prove anything but he had been sure that Kuantus Kuat had been up to something during the 'big jump'.
"This galaxy, if it is truly the Home Galaxy, seems far, far away. Based on the time it would take the light of this galaxy to reach this local system, how long would you estimate it's been since we departed the Galactic Empire?"
"Certainly a long time ago." Nalas avoided any sort of committed answer.
"How many others have you told of your discovery?" Yos asked.
"No one, My Lord. I knew the gravity of such a task could only be entrusted to someone with my abilities. Your Highness has shown me the utmost favor entrusting me with such a duty. I saw no advantage in informing any of my peers or junior associates in this quest. All knowledge that has been learned is either on this datapad or in here." Nalas pointed a boney finger towards his own skull.
"And how about the Moffs? The Admiralty? The Bureau of Operations? Any scientific holozine articles to further add to your esteem? I know how you scientists work."
"No one, My Lord. I swear it. You and I are the only beings alive who know of this secret." Nalas had fear in his voice.
"Good. . .very good. This secret has a power all in its own."
"What is it you fear, My Lord?"
"Others will want to return to the Empire . . . the Old Empire. We have been devoid of everything they have ever known out here. And we have been on our own. Many will want to return to the familiar."
"But there isn't any way to get there." Nalas seemed lost. His hollow face seemed to be a study in confusion. "The 'big jump' had to have been a series of unreplicatable errors to have allowed us to survive the first time."
"No doubt, but the masses don't know that. Dropping this information on them today and we'll have blood-soaked chaos in the streets tomorrow. Civil war the day after that."
"Surely this information will not stay in the dark forever. Secrets like this have a way of finding the light of day."
"You speak the truth, my friend." Yos reached forward and placed a hand on the shoulder of the Givin. "We must tell them in a way that does not endanger what we have built here on Mars."
"Perhaps, Your Majesty would start with breaking it to an esteemed upper echelon of his most trustworthy advisers?" Nalas suggested.
Yos thought about it. He really needed to get on top of this before it escaped and got ahead of him. Nothing but disaster loomed if he let it get out of control.
"Next month I want you to join me when I have my regent's council. We will use that as an opportunity to let the rest of Tarkin's Fist know that we may have found the way home. Until then tell no one what you have discovered."
"As you wish, My Lord."
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