4/25/1 Y.O.
"And he's leaving for three days?" General Kinear asks General Ritter. They're both in their off-duty garb, taking a bit of a stroll around the central market square of the F-deck. Just two old men, having a bit of a chat and walk.
"That's currently the plan. He's vacationing," Ritter sounds and looks amused by that. "And it looks like he's willing to let me try my hand at undercover work again."
Kinear smirks at that, eyes lit with amusement. "The last time you went undercover Palpatine was still sane." He pauses for a moment, wanders to one of the vendors, buys a bag of roasted, salted nuts, and then returns to Ritter offering them to him.
Ritter takes two, smirks, a little, munches them down, and says. "I told him it had been a few years."
Kinear laughs, a deep, rich sound. He doesn't eat the nuts, doesn't personally like them, he's just got them for show. Part of blending in. "Decades you mean. Schiff tells me he's bending on resource acquisition." Kinear's feeling very pleased by how this is working out. They've been gently encouraging Kylo to try more in the way of diplomacy and it looks like he just, might, possibly, be about to attempt something along those lines.
"Schiff also tells me that he may have a friend."
Kinear's excited to hear that. "Who?"
"Major Frakes, Tactical Design Corps."
"Bill Frakes' boy?"
Ritter gestures, indicating he's got no idea. "I wouldn't know. Maybe."
Kinear's eyes light up. "Force be with us! If that's Bill's boy…"
"Who's Bill Frakes?" Ritter asks, puzzled.
"He was a logistics officer on the second Death Star, good man. Steady. Not particularly brilliant or inspired, but he didn't have to be. He just had to make sure anything loaded onto the Death Star got where it needed to go before it needed to be there." Both of them know how big of a job that was. "Better, and more important than that, he was an Empire man through and through, and so was the rest of his family. I had him under my command for about five years when he was fresh out of the Academy."
Ritter looks like he's tasting that, getting a feel for what they can do with it. "Schiff saw him leave while he was waiting to go in. He's young… About Ren's age. If he's who you think he is, he had to have been born within a year of the destruction of the second Death Star. But Frakes has a name, so… he can't be a Hux graduate, right?"
"In something specialized like design, Snoke likely preferred they weren't." They share a moment, understanding the limits of the Hux-method grads. Kinear thinks about his uniform, scanning the crowd seeing more than a hundred people wearing one within eye range, and sighs. "Granted, it looks like they just dusted these off and slightly re-tooled them, so… maybe not. What is he doing with Ren?"
"I don't know. Designing something? Maybe he's decided he finally wants a uniform? Tactical Design… That's…" Ritter spends a moment thinking, trying to remember. Most of the people in the Order are in one of eight main divisions, and he knows them, their organizational structure, their up and comers, and old faithfuls by heart. But about ten percent of the people handle the other approximately 97,000 jobs that a functional empire needs, and he's significantly less familiar with them. A moment of thinking finds what he's looking for. "Uniforms, armor, our symbols, the look of the Order. Whatever it is Ren's getting, it's the third or fourth time they've met. Ren keeps calling him back, and, apparently, calls him by his first name."
Kinear eyes the banners with the Order symbol on them hovering above them. "I bet he designed that."
Ritter nods. "Likely. And he was talking with Schiff about maybe doing some subversion. Maybe he's looking to get gear set for that. Schiff had the appointment after Frakes, and heard was that they were going to have lunch together after Ren gets back."
"Good. I'll poke around Frakes some, get a sense for who he is. See if we can use him to help steer Ren. Are we set for the Master's vacation?"
Ritter grins. "Oh yes. I've got it set. You know he took out four of the fifty on our list on his own, right?"
Kinear nods. "Hapian always was an idiot. If he'd had the sense of a lump of clay, he'd have gotten out of Ren's view before he started plotting."
"How'd he survive Snoke?"
"He was an idiot, but not so big of one to stay where Snoke could notice him. Like a lot of us, he got to the furthest extent of his territory and sent in glowing reports of whatever it was Snoke wanted to hear."
It's clear on Ritter's face that he sympathizes with that technique. "Ren's leaving on the 27th. First watch on the 28th, the forty-six who are left are going to get the same notice, at once, calling them to Resource Processing to immediately complete their retirement pages. I assume they'll be there in about two minutes, half-asleep and deeply upset about said mix up. Everyone who'll be in Resource Processing is ours. We'll make sure they get everyone settled in conference room B8, complain about the computers glitching, head off to 'fix the problem,' and then gas the room. We'll take out the lot of them at once, space their remains, and the paperwork will show that they all resigned at once and took transport to Coruscant. And if anyone checks, a ship will go, it will land on Coruscant, and from there the trail goes dead."
Kinear smiles. "Excellent. Good riddance to bad rubbish. I suppose we need to start working on the next list?"
"Schiff's already on it," Ritter says. "And we've got eight of our own re-enlisted. Another ten are getting everything in order and will be joining up soon. More problems though, they're starting to go through training, and… We're going to have to make sure that lands under his eye soon, or we're going to get fucked sideways on that."
"How bad?" Kinear asks. His personal training was so long ago that he was a trainer for the Republic's Clone Army. So, he's at least five generations of techniques out of touch.
"Most of his training officers are Hux grads."
Kinear grits his teeth. "Wonderful. Let's make sure his vacation goes as smoothly as possible. If we're lucky, he'll decide on another rest in the not wildly distant future, and we'll take advantage of that."
"And, if not, maybe we can get him to go on some sort of diplomatic visit or something… Go see a newly freed colony, maybe," Ritter says.
Kinear nods along, seeing it in his mind. "That would be good. If we can raise some of them, and have them join us, having him show up and 'rally' them, welcome them into the fold… They'd like that. He might, too."
"I think he would," Ritter says. "And even if he's not much of a fan of it, it'd be good for morale in the new colonies."
"Make them feel like they're part of something big and important. Make them feel valued. Might want to see if we can get him to visit each of our capitol ships, too."
"Snoke went years at a time without letting anyone lay eyes on him. Ren shouldn't," Ritter says, looking around at all of the people milling about. He guesses most of them couldn't identify the Master if he wasn't wearing his mask.
"Nope." Kinear looks at Ritter. "Are you old enough to remember Palpatine before he became Emperor?"
"Barely. I was eleven when he took over."
Kinear half inclines his head, men his age who aren't firmly entrenched in their dotage, or firmly entrenched in their tombs, are few and far between. "Before he was maimed, he used to make sure to go visit his supporters, meet with them, make sure they had the image of a personable, useful, powerful man who would work with them to achieve their goals."
Kinear sighs, remembering that version of the Emperor, though he was the Chancellor then. That was a man who knew how to rule. Who knew how to make the people around him want his rule. But, he doesn't have anyone like that to work with, and, really, never did. That version of Palpatine's been gone for decades, and no one even remotely like him has come about since.
"That might be trying to get more out of the Master than he can give," Ritter says, seeming to be thinking along the same lines.
Kinear thinks about it. Given the Master's family, assuming those rumors he's been able to collect are true, he should have some natural talent for this. Deeply buried. "Maybe, but… We'll never know if we don't try, and if we set it up right, have him meet with people who want him to do well, because they'll do well because of him…"
"Baby steps."
"Baby steps. He doesn't seem averse to learning how to do this, so we might as well work on making sure he gets the lessons," Kinear says with a smile, and plans.
"Do you think any of the decorum teachers they used to foist us onto are still around?" Ritter asks.
Kinear laughs. "There's a memory." Just like being several generations out of date on his training techniques, he also predates what Ritter's talking about, but he remembers it.
Palpatine had an idea of his officer corps. Polished, genteel, good representatives of the Empire. They could go anywhere, deal with anyone, ruffle no feathers until feathers needed to be ruffled. After all, Palpatine preferred to use diplomacy. He had a very definite idea of an iron fist in a silk glove. His officers, especially the higher up ones, were supposed to be able to negotiate, to soothe unhappy temperaments, to seek accord for the greater good of the Empire, and then, if such methods didn't work, they were expected to utterly flatten anyone who didn't take the easy route.
They were governors as much as soldiers, and as such, they were expected to have manners.
No one, no matter how useful in his or her respective field, got above Major without proving they had manners. And if they didn't, Palpatine made sure there were lessons available. Ritter's young enough he likely went through the decorum classes. Kinear's old enough that he's one of the ones who rubber stamped the idea and took his officers out of the line long enough for them to take the classes.
"If you can remember any of their names," Kinear says, "you might as well hunt them down. I don't know if we can get him to agree to it, but if there's a chance of it, let's have someone ready to go at a moment's notice."
"I'll check my records. And if I can't find the ones we used, there's got to be someone who does it."
"Someone…"