"I want to build a house," Daub said.
Senator Mithras Lasck regarded his son with undisguised amusement. Coming from virtually anyone else, such a statement would be unremarkable, but not here. "Really?" he asked with a chuckle.
The six-year-old boy nodded, "Uh-huh."
His ten-year-old brother added, "We can do it, Dad."
Mithras smiled broadly. "Do you think so, Rook?"
Rook straightened to his full height and puffed up his chest, "I'm certain of it."
Their father wondered briefly what had gotten into his two sons, but decided against questioning them on the spot. He did not want to discourage them. If they built something together and enjoyed themselves (better still: if he could help,) they might learn a few valuable things. On the other hand, if they failed, Daub and Rook would learn a great deal more. Failures are tools parents use to see into the truth of their children. They are far more revealing of the people they might become than success. No one wants to fail, children least of all. While Mithras did not like to watch his children fail, he knew that they had to learn to pick themselves up and try again. In any case, he found himself intrigued that they found building something interesting enough to try. That in itself was quite revealing.
"Where did you want to start?" Mithras asked. He kept his voice light and amused; all the better to hear the full extent of their plan.
Daub thrust a crude sketch on a piece of paper into Mithras' hand. It detailed the barest outline of the house, but Mithras could not really tell what the boy wanted to show him.
"Daub," Rook scolded, "don't give him that!" The older boy snatched the scrap of paper out of Mithras' hand and replaced it with a datapad. The boy keyed the image to life, and beamed when his father stared in approving astonishment. "What do you think, Dad?"
Mithras knew his oldest child was an artist, but this was jaw-dropping even for Rook. He was looking at a detailed blueprint of a structure including floor plan, energy harness, sub-structure, frame structure, windows, door frames, appliances, plumbing, and everything else short of a contractor's seal. "I'm impressed," he said, meaning it, "You thought this up, Rook?"
Daub shook his head. He looked like he wanted to speak, but could not settle on the words.
Rook spoke instead. "I drew it up. Daub thought it through. He told me what he wanted, and I talked him through this."
Mithras, thunderstruck, could only gape at his boys. "You did all this on your own?" he asked. When the boys nodded happily, he examined the datapad more intently. Almost at once he found a problem. "You want to build it here?" he asked.
"Yes," Rook said. "We can start in the courtyard with the new living room, and tear down the house one room at a time until it's done."
"Tear down the house," their father said uncertainly. "What's wrong with it now?"
"Too short," Daub blurted. He looked like he was about to say more, but, again, could not decide what else to say.
"We keep seeing you bump your head on the ceiling, Dad," Rook explained. "This house will be much taller. Also look at the next page," the boy said and switched over to a beautiful, walk-through view of the interior of the house they proposed. "Look at the play of light and shadow. We have all these floor lamps scattered about the house because it's so dim in here. We'll be able to open it up in here."
Mithras found his astonishment open up to depths he never knew existed. "Light and shadow?" he repeated unable to believe what he was hearing.
Mithras knew his sons were bright. He encouraged Rook to paint holo images from a young age along with other things, but the boy grew so talented many of the walls of the house were frescoed with Rook's work. Daub was a mechanical genius, and he could barely be restrained from dismantling anything in his path.
Rook, at age ten, was just now getting into his full, creative stride. When he was little, he played with color and shading until he could imitate flowers and sunsets in perfect detail. He had a passion for landscapes, and devoured images of alien worlds, noting the colors and shapes. Schools declared him a prodigy, and they had lobbied ceaselessly for the boy to come and study at their institutions since Rook was seven. The boy refused to be moved from home citing his need for his friends and family. He kept painting in flowers and landscapes until Mithras quietly suggested he might want to try painting people for a change. By now Rook was rendering beautiful portraits of those he saw around him. Among the first was a playful image of his baby sister Mystery appearing to balance against the stem of a Falleen sun lily. "She's chubby," he said about the holo, "I like the way the shape of the flower slims her down." Another was a strange image of Chancellor Vellourum. In it, the man bowed his head as though in defeat and sorrow, one hand brought up to his brow in a gesture of weariness. "He looks so strong this way," Rook explained.
Mithras showed the holo to Vellourum and asked him what he thought. The Chancellor thought it "rather revealing" and spent an afternoon with Rook and his father talking about their impressions of other members of the Senate.
Before long images of all kinds filled their home on Coruscant, and Mithras began sending them back to the family homestead on Ruth. The Lasck family back on the home world was thrilled with what they saw and immediately began sending images for Rook to draw inspiration from. The boy gleefully made image after image until he had a portrait of all his relatives.
The most revealing thing about the boy was his refusal to declare even a single image a masterpiece. Instead he lingered on what he called the "big truth" of the subject. If he could draw out his feelings about whomever he painted or catch the emotion of that person; he was satisfied.
His real talent lay in his notion of people. He was never wrong. Rook could tell what made anyone tick. He could read others flawlessly, front and back. Human or alien, by voice or by image, it made no difference. He spotted liars and cowards instantly, and helped Mithras many times to steer such people into revealing themselves. If someone was an honest dealer, they could count on Mithras' son to send the respected senator their way. As a result, Mithras was surrounded by the unimpeachable trust and warmest friendships any senator had ever known. Even though many of his close colleagues tended to undermine Mithras' political goals by their minority status and refusal to bend their principles, the boy's knack for spotting shady dealers kept his father's name a respected one.
Rook's friends reflected the same value for character and honesty the boy surrounded his father with. Loved and respected by all who knew him well, he was (if not at the center of) at the heart of all attention. He had a strange ability to inspire his friends into the fullest form of life they ever experienced. While hard to explain in any great detail, all his friends cherished his company.
Daub, on the other hand, was either too young or too strange to have many social skills. Instead he had that rare talent of being able to look at any object and knowing how to take it apart and put it back together again. Behind his quiet, somewhat befuddled expression lay the mind of a genius. His confusion was with people not the rest of the world around him.
When Daub was three, he ripped apart the repulsor engine of a visiting friend of Mithras'. When a mighty clang erupted from the landing pad all in the house came running to find out what was wrong. The boy had cut the power to the idling repulsor and dropped the car to the surface of the pad. Out of one of the engines crawled the boy, covered in grease, and holding dirty relay. Before anyone could stop him, Daub wiped the relay on his shirt in a few careful strokes and crawled back into the engine. The adults bolted for the car, but before they got there the car bobbed back off the platform and Daub crawled out. He was mystified why they were so concerned. Mithras' friend immediately had the car looked over by a professional. Nothing was found except that the car used half as much fuel, and no one could explain why.
Mithras eventually got used to Daub's eccentricities. Over the years his friends began bringing their repairs to the senator's home. Half-joking they would ask, "Can your son look at it?" More often than not, Mithras' strange, little boy could find the problem and fix it.
Sometime along the way the boy began building things. Toys, tools, and a score of small vehicles he used to move around the city were only the beginning of what he managed to assemble. But all of those things were no larger than a shoe box.
By now nothing should have surprised Mithras, but rebuilding their house was on a scale beyond any Daub had ever attempted. Any other parent would have denied his son this project, but Mithras saw few reasons to stop Daub. If the boy did not find his threshold soon he would never be normal. That, more than anything, worried him the most. Not everyone could tinker and toy with machines with the blissful skill Daub did, but everyone had to know their limits. And Mithras was more than a little concerned where those limits might be for his son even at this tender age.
To say Daub lacked social skills grossly understated the truth. He had almost none at all. He barely spoke, and could never remember to eat on his own. At the dinner table, he kept his father in stitches by his antics. He walked on the table, passed the dishes around only after installing mini-repulsors and sliding them around the table, and had a habit of blurting out strange announcements to the company like: "Mystery's using your robe for a parachute, Senator." Or "Rook wants to paint your girlfriend naked." Or "If you were a genius, Rook would tell you." Or "My teacher at school told me she'd have your baby, Chancellor." Or "If you want your oppppp… opapo…opposition to crumble feed them some of mom's deserts." Or most often "Treat your droids like pets." These announcements always came out of the clear blue, and never failed to cause an eruption of laughter. Often he would stare earnestly at whomever he was talking to while they laughed, oblivious to the joke and expecting some answer. To hear his flat little voice and see his sincere manner made most of what he did or said a riot.
Never angry, never demanding, always blissfully unaware of his faults no matter how many times it was explained to him, Daub managed to be the good boy his father wanted him to be. But he was still very strange.
Mithras knew why his children had these abilities, and only half the reason came from a good place. Rook's art and charisma came from a confidence only his father could instill. Rook knew what he was capable of because Mithras disciplined with a kind word and a good example. When the boy wanted to try something new, father acted as a guide through it rather than a deterrent until greater maturity was achieved. Daub's technical prowess stemmed from his father's willingness to allow him to experiment to further his experience. His daughter Mystery also leaned heavily on her father's mighty shoulders, and was developing into a brilliant acrobat and charming girl.
But there was a balance struck in their outlook. The children had only one active parent. Osprey Lasck wanted nothing to do with her children. As a result much of what the children did was in an effort to win affection from their mother. Mithras feared that all his kids would grow up to be these fabulously talented… creatures that lacked even the slightest shred of purpose or compassion. What made it heartbreaking was his culpability.
Mithras loved his wife Osprey enough that he could not find fault with her, instead he settled the blame upon himself and did what any Lasck did: everything he set his mind to extremely well. Back on Ruth, the Lasck line had flourished quietly for five millennia. They were farmers, merchants, lawyers, builders, and, on the whole, very good neighbors. But not one of them in all that time had ever grown ambitious. Osprey changed that forever. Osprey, and the times she heralded, would destroy the Lasck family forever, and Mithras was her weapon of choice.
When they met, Mithras had been a content, respected lawyer. Osprey had been a student at a local university studying for a degree in history. Mithras was violently in love with her from the start. Friends warned him she saw him only as a vehicle to her own designs, but he ignored them. By the time they were married, she had turned him away from his quiet life and made him look into public life.
Osprey was passionate, demanding, driven, and utterly merciless with herself and her husband. She saw Mithras as the one who would open the doors she could not, and the most conscientious sounding board any researcher ever had. When her research demanded she needed to move closer to the capital of Ruth, she convinced her adoring husband to run for an office there and did not rest until he got it. When she received her doctorate and was offered a job at the Republic archives on Coruscant, she begged Mithras to run for a senate seat. When he demurred, she went into a rage shouting, crying, pleading, and eventually seducing her husband into reconsidering.
She bore the children, but no one could mistake how upsetting they were to her. Rook received a few weeks attention from his mother before she abandoned him for her studies. Daub and Mystery didn't receive any attention at all. Mithras was horrified to watch her as the delivery droid moved forward to show her Daub for the first time. "Your son mis…" the rest was lost in a droid screech of alarm as Osprey batted it angrily away. The droid almost dropped the infant, but Mithras managed to steady both machine and child before Daub could take a nasty spill.
"Can I leave yet?" Osprey screamed at the droid. "I don't have time for this!"
When Mystery was born, Mithras left explicit instructions for the baby to be brought directly to him.
Osprey saw the children around the house and spoke to them about her day, but she never acted the part of their mother
Mithras narrowly kept himself from returning home to Ruth after Mystery's birth. But Ruth needed him here now, and (to his shame) he still loved his wife. He was still in thrall of her, endlessly dazzling and fascinating him to new depths of affection.
Fortunately for the children, Mithras was a loving and doting father. He found joy in his children so profound he almost neglected his duties as a senator. Strangely, all the kids loved Osprey almost as blindly as Mithras himself.
It left Mithras with these wildly talented kids and no direction to point them. Shaping them into what they were supposed to be was what his mother had done with him and his father had given him the tools of character he would need to get through it. He feared they were missing something crucial. He was right. Without Osprey's influence, the children became shaped by their skills rather than by their parents love. Even though Mithras devoted every moment he could and loved them twice as much, Rook, Daub, and Mystery became cynical, detached, and emotionally immature.
Something had to give. Mithras felt Daub's case was the most severe of the lot. If Daub did not reach a threshold, and reach it soon, he might never grow mature enough to function as an adult. Already the boy was terrifying his teachers with his abilities, and it appeared only Rook could reign him in.
So in an effort to cull his son's fantastic talent, Mithras allowed the boys to begin building a new house. The building code alone should be enough to discourage them. If he imposed the same restrictions Coruscant bureaucracy had about building codes upon the boys, frustration would see to Daub and Rook.
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Slow astonishment is a rare breed. More often sudden, stark changes lead to surprise since the observer has no time to expect what is coming. The day Daub finished the house was a strange one to remember. After two years of methodical, unrelenting work, his eight-year-old son tested a final light, cleaned all the floors, put away his tools, and presented his incredulous parents their new house. For once Osprey was there with Mithras to experience the event. She was livid. "What do you mean, boy!" she screamed at Rook. In all this time she had not seen the house in daylight. She might have seen the changes in the gloom but never linked them to the brats. In hindsight she wondered why she had never asked Mithras what was going on. When she was told what her boys had done it had taken her a full three minutes of silence to comprehend the truth of it. Now fear and shock fueled her rage. Shocking that her young sons could accomplish this without her stabbed at her ego like a vibroblade. Fear that she was losing control of her husband to her children drove her to a near hysteria. These brats would not have her beloved husband over her desires. Her image of what her children were to become was more important than what they were capable of doing. They would not let her down, nor would they defy her careful plans for them.
"Darling," Mithras said trying to calm her, "Daub did a good job, and I'm proud of him."
Osprey stared at her husband as if he had suddenly bled his brain dry. "That boy did not build this house!" she insisted. "No son of mine will crease his hands or bend his back to labor," she declared.
"But, darling," Mithras objected, "They did a fine job. Just look around you."
Osprey did. The place was undeniably better than before. Opulent would be a fair appraisal of the place. High ceilings drew the eye up to molded arches. Every hall was wide yet made warm with color. Every room toyed with the emotions in some fashion or another. Depending on where one stood, the feelings could range from joyous elation in the family room to quiet reflection in Mithras' office. Rook had a studio, while Daub had a workshop, and Mystery had the whole house for a gymnasium thanks to the use of some clever repulsor fields Daub had concealed in the walls. Osprey's fringe benefits were non-existent since she declined to speak to Rook or Daub for any length of time. Daub had guessed that a fine office next to the master bedroom would do.
Due to Rook and Mystery's insistence, Daub installed a romantic mantle framed in the trunk of a petrified idun tree from Ithor. "It'll be good for mother and Dad," they reasoned. Daub saw no reason to contradict them.
The day the Ithorian merchant sold the trunk to Rook was memorable since the tall alien wailed in a loud, stereo, basso voice that such a priceless treasure should be wasted on the whims of children. After Daub had completed the work of installation and fashioning the idun, Rook had invited the good man back to see it. The change was stunning. Petrified idun bark was rich in nutrients, and made ideal purchase for Ithorian orchids, Ryloth cave blooms, and half a dozen other exotic flora. The flowers bloomed at different hours of the day, and heat from the mantle set off different combinations throughout the day. Far from making the room dark and drab, the room seemed to have a shifting mood throughout the day. One of the blooms even reflected light about the room like a light rain. With little care and the occasional fire, the mantle could last indefinitely. Terraced trays wrapped around the room to accommodate vines sprouting fruits and small orange blooms. The furnishings were arranged to admire the whole room and not interfere with the delicate greenhouse. The Ithorian stared at it for long minutes at first sight. Breathless, the alien man slumped into a comfortable chair while his eyes moved independently about the room. "You did this?" he asked in a voice and language that sounded like heavy boulders colliding underwater.
Daub said nothing, but Rook dived right in, "I worked out the layout and did the research. My brother fashioned it according to my ideas." Rook sounded nervous. He desperately craved approval from this man, and lacked the wits or arrogance to hide it.
The hammerhead had focused his attention on the boys. "If you need anything else, don't hesitate to contact me," he said, "This is wonderful."
"Would you change anything?" Rook asked. "A Ho'Din senator had a few things to say, but he didn't know what else to do with the idun trunk."
The Ithorian nodded his massive head in approval. "They may know their flowers, but they are wise enough to take care with idun trees," he said without derision. Turning back to the mantle he sighed deeply (with his two massive mouths and sets of vocal cords the sound caused the room to vibrate.) "But change? I would change very little. You've done a master tillers' job here."
Rook beamed with pride. Daub seemed distracted.
In a moment, Mithras came home, and the Ithorian was invited to dinner with the family. The largely unknown yet stately man kept his visitor entertained for hours while the flowers on the mantle bloomed in succession.
The Ithorian still came by to see Mithras and his kids once a week.
And it was in this room that Osprey was in a full throttle rage that wilted the nearest blooms. "My children," she bellowed, "Will be scholars and statesmen. Not common laborers. My children," she continued, "Will be artists and leaders. Not farmers and wrench-turners."
"But, mother, I designed this," Rook protested, "I thought it was a work of art. Don't you?"
Before Mithras could stop her, Osprey struck, not slapped, Rook to the floor. "You will not lecture me!" she screamed. She turned to Daub who was silently watching his mother's tantrum stonily. "And you will learn the place I have for you!" she bellowed into his face. "You have played the idiot boy long enough!" she declared and clobbered the boy with a sweeping backhand. "If you can make all this, you will learn to present yourself as the proper son of a Republic Senator."
Osprey brought back her hand to strike her daughter, but Mithras restrained her and dragged her screaming to their new room. When the door shut the din she was making abruptly cut off. The kids knew they had to be yelling in there, yet oppressive silence echoed through the house.
"I knew soundproofing their room was a good idea," Daub said spitting blood into the hearth.
Rook began to fight back tears, but Mystery stopped him by letting out a full throated wail. In a way it helped him to gain his composure. Mystery needed to be calmed down, and her big brother Rook had to protect her. Knowing Dad would do the same; he moved to her and embraced her gently. Through her racking sobs, he noticed Daub coldly watching the hall their parents had retreated down.
Mystery sobbed, "Mother doesn't want us!"
"Of course she does," Rook soothed, "She's just surprised."
"But she hates the house," she protested. "She hit you and Daub, and Daddy stopped her from hitting me." Her words took a while to escape her between great heaving sniffs that jarred her from top to bottom, but Rook kept her from crumpling to the floor.
"She's just upset," Rook said. It sounded hollow and wrong even to him, but he was the eldest and was supposed to have an answer to these things.
"She hates me!" Mystery cried.
"So what," Daub said quietly, "You're Dad's favorite anyway. What do we care what she thinks?"
Rook was old enough to know that what Daub said were the cruelest words yet. "Don't make it worse, Daub," he warned.
"I just meant that Dad still wants us," Daub said.
The house erupted in noise as their parents emerged from their room. Shouting at full volume, their mother accused their father of being small and weak among other things. Their father spoke calmly to soothe her, but was only provoking her more with his composure. Osprey threatened to send the children away to various boarding schools to "teach them the proper manners of the Aristocracy" while Mithras calmly told her she would do no such thing. She accused him of raising a peasant mob under her roof while he told her to calm down and take a look at her office. She told him he was a small minded slave, and he stared at her blankly.
Satisfied her point was made, Osprey stormed out of her new home to return to the archives. After a few hours of blissful study, she might return. Or she might retire to a fellow professor's home to vent out whatever frustration remained.
When she left, Mithras looked uncharacteristically sad. His easy smile and bright eyes were gone. Every part of him seemed to sag and shrink, and for a moment Rook was noticeably taller than his father. He was drained, and his kids saw it plain and new to their young eyes.
It was more than Mystery could bear. She rushed to her father and sobbed anew against him while she clutched fiercely at his leg. When he stood still as stone for a moment too long she begged him not to leave them here alone with mother.
That finally brought him around. He shook himself free of his concerns and tended to his kids. There was no way to ignore Osprey's behavior, but he could tend to his kids without much backlash.
Holding Mystery gently Mithras said, "I guess she doesn't like the place."
Rook leapt into action. "We can rebuild. I can redesign the place to suit her better. It should only take a bit of time."
Mithras shook his head. "No, son, the place is just fine. I might have someone redecorate, but not you."
Daub extracted a loose tooth Osprey had managed to knock free and tossed it into the fireplace. "Why bother?" he said. "Mother will be terrified of the change anyway."
Rook bowed his head. Daub was right. Their mother was terrified of the unexpected, and that meant that nothing could be done. Even if they changed everything back, the act of changing it would be unbearable for her. The fact that her sons had changed it originally would only emphasize what others returned to normal. They could not even move to another house for fear of alarming her. "We have some hard times ahead," he said.
"She'll come around," Mithras said. "She's too absorbed in her research to notice this for long."
"Besides," Rook said, "Gwavem would be heartbroken if we changed the place." He spoke of the Ithorian they still had over for dinner once a week.
Mithras laughed, "I suppose we can't disappoint him."
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But Osprey didn't stop at the Archives. She went directly to Daub's school and reenrolled him in the Military Institute of Chalidrila. The next day, two of the MIC's uniformed representatives collected Daub and a few of his belongings from the house he had just completed. He was marched to a waiting transport and off Coruscant that day. Over the next few years, he was under the strictest discipline and punished harshly. By the time he graduated, Osprey had obtained an appointment to the Academy on Caridia, and was sent off again. Rook was just graduating from the Academy himself, and his standing in his class made Daub's enrollment easier.
Before Daub left for Caridia, Osprey spoke to him for the first time in ten years and the last time in his life. "Don't fail, boy," she snapped, "You're going to serve the Republic."
With rigid self control, the young man preyed aloud, "May the Force grant that I never hold a grudge like you can, Mother."
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Sitting in his cell after a full three hours of sleep, Daub had to admit that he could trace his way back to that house on Coruscant and his mother's order that he serve without fail. It sickened him now to know how dutiful he had been to her over the years. He had served with such vigor that he was now a criminal to every world he knew. While not a killer, he had killed occasionally for the Emperor. More often self-defense caused him to raise his hand against another, but he was a soldier and his trade demanded his obedience.
The door to his cell opened and a grizzled, one-eyed Mon Calamari entered with Kriban behind him. The white uniform meant nothing to him. He was never allowed aboard the new Mon Calamari cruisers during his tenure with the Rebellion. But the face was familiar.
"Miftir?" Daub said pleasantly surprised. "Thank the Force, am I glad to see you alive and well." They had met on Hoth a time or two, and Daub liked the officer who he remembered was as fierce as they came.
"Lasck," Miftir said in greeting. "Do you understand they mean to execute you?"
Daub snorted back a bitter laugh, "I'm not surprised."
Miftir nodded and presented his case. "I can provide you with a stay of execution if you cooperate."
Without hesitation Daub said, "Go on."
"It's a beast of a job though," Miftir admitted, "I'll need you to get this ship up and moving within the week. Can you do it?"
Daub sighed. He knew it always would boil down to his precious skills and his lack of any real persuasion. Time and again he worked his way out of a mess someone else had made and lacked the ability to clean up; only to be thrust headlong into another one. But at least he knew what was at stake. "Let's get started and find out."
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Half an hour later, Captain Seva Kect received the first of what became a downpour of complaints. Without prior authorization, two full decks in engineering evacuated and depressurized. After a few moments she managed to figure out why but by that time another complaint had surfaced for her to investigate.
Apparently someone activated the emergency lock down for the engineering section. In the pandemonium that followed the security panel controlling the environmental systems to every deck had been left unattended. The engineer in charge swore the panel was locked down before he left, but the depressurized decks and the bypassed alarms made it clear that it had been overridden.
Engineers in space suits waited for permission to go outside the ship to inspect the hull, but by that time the second complaint reached Captain Kect.
Every droid on the ship had vanished into engineering without orders, the new report informed her; before too long more strange things began cropping up back there. What finally alarmed her was the main reactor shut down and the auxiliary plant came to emergency power. If the auxiliary generator scrammed, the ship would be dark and adrift for at least an hour while the main generator was powered up; assuming it could power up.
The bridge crew was in full crisis mode when Admiral Miftir walked calmly onto the bridge. His single grey eye surveyed the mayhem and settled on Seva. "I'm disappointed the ship requires this amount of effort just to sit here, Captain," he informed her. It was clear he did not approve of her in charge of a Mon Calamari ship just by the tone of his voice, and she saw a few heads nod in approval.
Angered she ignored the Admiral in flagrant abuse of military etiquette. "Is anyone back there?" she demanded of the duty officer.
The Chief Engineer answered for the man, but Seva did not silence his insolence. She was fuming at being so casually treated. She was the Captain, and as such she wanted people to speak when spoken to not blab every stray thought. But the man did answer her question. "No one was back there when I left. I'm not sure if the sensors are on line to check if that is still the case.
"They're not," the second watch Engineer declared. The Mon Calamari had been roused from a sound sleep and for that was in no mood to debate trivialities. "Power to those sensors can only come from the main reactor so they don't put a drain on the emergency units."
"Get those men outside to check the hull. We need any information we can gather," Seva ordered.
Disagreement on this issue was sharp and loud. The Chief Engineer wanted to send the men directly into the affected areas while the third watch Engineer wanted to find all the droids to figure it out. An immediate clamor of disagreements filled the room to capacity for a full five minutes.
"Quiet!" Miftir bellowed. Many buckled under the force of his voice and everyone flinched at the command. Mon Calamari have powerful vocal cords from their aquatic nature. The Admiral was aware he had not even used his full throated shout and still managed to cause physical pain. In a normal tone he explained that he had sent a specialist into Engineering to get the ship moving. That specialist had full authority to do as he pleased until the ship got moving again.
The Chief Engineer couldn't stop a groan of exasperation. "You sent Lasck in?" he asked in disbelief.
Miftir could hardly restrain an impish grin. "Does that upset you, Chief?"
The tired man couldn't stop his chatter from incriminating himself further. "I'll never get this ship back together after he's done down there. He'll ruin the motivators before he repairs a single light fixture."
As if to confirm his prediction the lights flickered around them then flashed to emergency battery power.
Bedlam ensued. Voices rose to a din like the clamor industrial machinery. Tempers snapped already frayed nerves. Arguments broke out, and order was lost.
For ten minutes they went on in this way. Then the lights came back on again. The ship lurched as the main engines fired back to life. The helmsman had carelessly left the throttle control to full power, and the Independence heaved her bulk along like a startled bantha. By the time he managed to draw back the thrust, the ship groaned a mighty howl as her keel flexed under the force of the struggling engines.
Almost like clockwork, systems came on line that had formally been smashed and inoperable flashed to life. For a few minutes the ship buzzed and chirped as one panel or a single system came back on line. Panels lit up with a flourish of light and noise then each breaker, circuit, and algorithm tested itself in meticulous detail. One after another this was repeated around the bridge and all over the ship. It was like a man trying on a well worn and often repaired set of clothing. Seva could almost imagine a fastidious man brushing out wrinkles and pulling at hems. The whole process spoke of an intimacy bordering on self-conscious care.
Then two droids appeared. One was a battered protocol model, and his companion was a tiny messenger droid that raced around to avoid the tread of ignorant feet. "Pardon me, sir," the Protocol droid said to a Rodian sitting at the shield control, "but if you would step away from the control panel, I will assure your safety."
Confused but indifferent, the Rodian rose from his chair, and stepped back one pace and then a second.
The two droids moved in. The protocol droid babbled on in binary for a few minutes before he activated the panel. Immediate, frenzied sparks played over the consol. Unphased, the droid opened the service panel and extracted two fried data busses. The panel ceased to convulse and about half of it whirred to life. The messenger droid raced from the bridge with the two fried chunks of circuitry in its courier ports.
Calmly the protocol droid moved to the next panel and repeated the process. By the time he finished activating it, another messenger droid sprinted through the room. Two fresh data busses were installed in less time than it took to speak of it, and shield control hummed to life. "You may return to your station, sir," the droid told the Rodian.
No one noticed the exchange until the protocol droid had repeated the procedure, with little variation, five times and was about to go onto a sixth when the Chief engineer stopped him. "Who gave you authorization to repair those stations?" he demanded.
"Why, the builder of course," the droid said apparently surprised that the Mon Calamari had to ask.
"This is my ship and I am in charge of what is and what isn't fixed. Furthermore, no protocol droid is authorized to maintain sophisticated equipment. We have astromech droids for that."
"I'm sorry, sir, but all the astromech droids are outside the ship at the moment, fixing the hull. I was instructed to short out the bypasses installed since the engagement, and install new circuitry," the droid said.
That got the attention of every engineer within earshot. If every astromech droid was outside, then who was running the reactor? If this protocol droid was replacing circuitry, then who gave it the diagnostic files to recognize the bypasses?
"Who is the builder?" the Chief demanded.
"That'll be Lasck," Miftir said calmly. "He uses that name around droids. They seem eager to please him when 'the builder' comes around."
A messenger droid scurried up to the protocol droid with a fresh load of circuit boards and an audio message in Lasck's distinctive rumble. "Doing fine, CR-12, I need you to tell the station officers to shut down their systems to standby once they run a full power test. Could you see to it that they test them one at a time? That would help out a great deal down here."
"Have that messenger droid take this comlink to Lasck, and tell him to call me when he gets it," the Chief engineer ordered CR-12.
It took a while, but Lasck's voice eventually called the Chief Engineer over the comlink. "Yes, Chief, I'm listening," Daub said.
"Get out of Engineering, Lasck," the Chief ordered.
"Can do," Daub said cheerfully. "I've been out of there for a while now."
Everyone, including Miftir this time, was stunned. "Who's running the reactor then?" the Chief asked.
"I got a heavy lifter, and an EG-6 running the engines," Daub answered. "Between the two of them they'll manage."
Horrified the Chief shouted into the comlink, "You can't do that! The reactor was scrammed less than an hour ago!"
"Then they don't have much power to manage, Chief. Don't worry. The startup on Event Horizon motivators is just a scaled down version of what we're doing here. The heavy lifter will make sure the EG-6 keeps a proper scale in mind," Daub said calmly. "What you need to worry about is the sublight engines. The nozzles severed their control lines some time ago."
"And just what do you expect me to do about it form here?" the Chief bellowed. "You have every access to engineering blocked off."
"I'm replacing the shrouds that were burned off the control lines. Having air in here would only spread radiation so I'm fixing that before I let you back down here. What I need you to do is set the nozzles to dry dock mode and point them away from me while I replace the control leads. I'll have a droid string the lines back to the main hub."
The Chief was about to begin fuming again, but the third watch Chief touched his shoulder to get his attention. "That will work won't it, Chief?" he asked.
Still enraged the Chief snapped, "Of coarse it will work! But…"
Seva stepped in. Behind her ruined face lay an intrigued expression. "How soon can he repair them that way?" she asked.
"Not long," the Second Watch Chief admitted. "Less than a day, hours maybe," he speculated. "He'll need the control hubs repaired and tied into navigation before we can return to running mode. I hadn't thought to look those over since we've been adrift.
"See to it," Seva ordered.
The third watch Chief speculated: "We don't know if the nav control is working yet."
Alarmed, the Chief Engineer asked, "Didn't you check against the gyro in the planetarium?"
"No," the Mon Calamari admitted, "I've been trying to keep the pressure down in the reactor core."
"Get over there," the Chief ordered, "take as many as you need."
"I was going to do that myself, Chief," Lasck said through the comlink.
Before the Chief could unload on Daub, Seva stepped in. "We'll handle it from here, Mr. Lasck. What will you be addressing next?"
"The logical choice would be the power leads severed to the weapons across the ship. Tying off those loose cables would make the ship easier to move about in."
"Is that true?" Seva asked. "I thought the sections we sealed off were from hull breaches." While she was not quite so ignorant as to believe this statement, even as she made it, Seva could see the Chief begin to order his thoughts rather than wasting his efforts on the procedural matters endemic to the Independence.
"No we have whole sections sealed off for safety reasons. Most of the damage we suffered was around the engines, hangars, and weapons array. The most extensive damage was on the array, but I felt the need to get under way more important than the weapons," the Chief said.
"I can have the squadron crews work on the hangars until you have personnel available to finish the job," Seva offered.
Fully distracted now, the Chief looked grateful, "That would help out a great deal. I can give them a list of the major damage in flight control. If they could begin with…"
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"Home One is on station," the duty officer said late that night. A loud cheer roared out of tired throats from one end of the ship to the other. A gentle shudder from the floor and bulkheads informed the crew that the Independence was underway again after three days adrift. Thanks to Lasck's talent for troubleshooting, the ship almost darted out of orbit with more dexterity than she had before committing to battle. Thanks to Captain Kect's genius for keeping personnel eagerly busy, the crew was both energized and jubilant. With Lasck leading the way, the engineers rushed to their work with gusto. He didn't order them about, but he took on the hardest, most frustrating jobs and did them with astonishing speed. The engineers followed behind him with a clear-cut sense of mission as everything he did delineated tasks in an easy to follow order. To oversimplify it: he made the job easier by making them think about the smaller jobs that had to be done behind him. He assaulted the big picture and the most daunting challenges, and left small jobs behind him.
Captain Kect organized the crew while the engineers assigned priorities. She kept everyone focused on the task at hand by smoothing over tempers, exuding confidence, and generally keeping confusion at bay. In her experience, crewmembers would follow orders they understood better than ones that sounded arbitrary. She made everyone understand their stake and their contribution to the overall picture. In some cases she inflated the importance of one person a bit to encourage them, but not so much for them to loose touch with the others.
Compared to the Intrepid, the Independence was a cumbersome outfit. But they were a large crew, and she was able to use more crewmen for the same things to speed the work along. In the past she had to think more clearly how to use people for an elegant solution. But now she could throw large teams against a problem and get the same results. It turned into a contest to see if the engineers could work ahead of Lasck, and by doing so emerge with a moral victory against the erratic ex-Imperial. But Lasck kept them tantalized all day until everything was done. In his wake, the engineers raced about smaller tasks in a varied frenzy while he led them on a steady march to completion. For Captain Kect this provided the most entertaining sideshow. While she never spoke to Lasck, she nonetheless was driven by his direction all day. The Chief and his people coordinated their efforts through her, and always looked for a way to overtake or bypass the man. This translated into her giving out a list of what he had done against what they had done. She acted as scorekeeper between Lasck and the Engineers for half the day before the squadron crews began to get in on the act. Determined to make a show of themselves, they unloaded labor on the hangars all day. They resolved to repair them before the Engineers could sweep in. Privately they wished to tear the hangars back to the furthest bulkhead out and rebuild them to better suit their needs. The Independence's engineers had stonewalled the flight crews for years against their lists of improvements; now a golden opportunity lay wide open for them to remake the hangars in their own image. Seva was delighted to indulge them.
At the end of a very long day, almost starting over into a new one, the main engines rumbled to life again, and Lasck emerged from his informal (and largely esoteric) race with the engineers the clear victor. To add injury to insult, he finished out the hangars before the first watch entered their new flight control booth.
Not to say the Independence ran like new. She was virtually defenseless. The beating she received at the hands of the Imperial fleet had all but crippled her. Navigation was a total loss and was handled by a shuttle flying ahead of her like a shepherd. Her entire weapons array was shut down, but that was merely to accommodate repairs. About a third of her turbolasers and a tenth of her ion cannons were completely smashed. They would need replacing soon if Admiral Miftir intended to raid Coruscant, but that was only rumor. She could launch fighters, but in the mad dash to repair the hangars, the fighters had been ignored. They had also been so badly shuffled about that untangling them would be a chore in itself.
The navigation issue was critical. At sublight speeds the shepherd system would do, but a jump to light speed was out of the question. In desperation the Chief engineer turned to Lasck again.
He was found under a B-Wing fixing the gyroscopic cockpit servos the pilot had damaged inside the Death Star. "It'll cost you, Chief," Lasck warned.
"You're a prisoner last time I checked, Lasck," the Chief commented, "You don't have the leverage to bargain with."
"You misunderstand me," Lasck said diplomatically. "I'll need a workshop and a Given to fabricate a nav computer from scratch."
"If I had a Given we'd be on our way already," the Chief sulked.
"Ask Miftir," Lasck suggested. "He can assign us one."
The Given were a doleful looking race adept at upper level mathematics. Daub had dealt with them before, and respected their talents. So great was their prowess with math that Given manufactured starships devoid of nav computers, the Given having no need for them. But they were rare in the Alliance ranks, and all of them were pressed into cryptography or research and development.
"What about a workshop?" Daub asked.
The Chief thought about it. He thought about it for a long time since he had not slept in two days and thought was a foggy notion. He finally asked, "Where?"
"Give me the space above the main hangar access, and I promise you won't regret it," Daub said.
"Planning to escape, Lasck?" the Chief asked.
"No, but overhauling starships will be easier," Daub said.
The space he wanted would do, but its real purpose was bulk storage. Space aboard being at a premium, the large compartment would put outfitting the ship at a disadvantage. Space had to be made elsewhere, but where and how?
"I'll use the room as my quarters if you like," Daub offered.
"Don't you mean your cell?" the Chief said.
Daub didn't answer. The offer was made. They could take it or leave it.
"Alright you can have the room, but I'll need two meters off its short beam for storage," the Chief said.
"I'll move the bulkheads today," Daub said.
"Make me a nav computer first," the Chief ordered.
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Miftir reinstalled guards inside Daub's workshop. Not that he wanted to or thought it necessary. Daub's principle interest was atonement not escape, but Miftir had to bend to pressure from Borsk Fey'leya when the Bothan representative discovered how Lasck was being treated. Daub barely noticed. He was too busy. After he built the nav computer, a Given came aboard to program it. After he moved back the bulkhead for the Chief's requested storage, a dozen small jobs were waiting for his attention.
Starships are never fixed; they just attain a better state of repair. Everything that could be brought to him was dumped in his workshop. Droids helped with the backlog. A little power droid followed him around the shop acting as a combination test station/ toolbox. EG-4's top was covered with tools that the boxy little droid balanced on his flat top while he powered up everything Daub set in front of him. He stood for this treatment with an apparent eagerness. If one cared to know, Daub had saved EG-4 from the scrap heap. He had all but jumped in surprise when he found the little guy. EG-4s were very rare. The more popular EG-6 was far more widespread, and the EG-5s were specialist power units for military hardware. EG-4 was a walking, chirping fusion generator, but most important to Daub he was the only all-purpose power droid ever made. An EG-6 was all but worthless in a space dock, and an EG-5 would fry delicate circuitry with its output. EG-4 had a large processor and fine tuned fusion and output modules that made the type versatile but heavy and expensive. Few of the droids had been made, and Daub was delighted to have one. Unfortunately EG-4 was hobbled by a complex set of manipulator arms that were hopelessly mangled when a TIE fighter crashed into the hangar. Lacking the spare parts, the maintenance shop decided to scrap the droid, but Daub snatched EG-4 out of the junk bin before he was melted down.
"Power that engine up, EG-4," Daub said. On the workbench a B-Wing's Quadex Kyromaster engine flared to life. He had seventy of these things to overhaul before he could start on the J-77 engines off the A-Wings. The engine tried to fire off, but only cut out as safety routines triggered a shutdown. "You think the check valve to the safety relay is clogged shut?" he asked EG-4.
The blocky droid almost bubbled with enthusiasm. While Veril Line Systems had installed a doleful vocal unit in EG-4 that made the droid sound both stupid and melancholy, Daub had been forced to replace it with one off an R4 unit. The match was not altogether feasible, but it made EG-4 sound cheerful.
"He says: He thinks so because the power he is feeding the engine is flowing properly. There are no power spikes or contagion from corrupted lines," CR-12 told Daub.
Daub nodded thoughtfully then said, "An astromech can manage that without much fuss." He turned to an H-70 heavy lifer droid, "Take this one back to R2-R9 back in the hangar and I'll send a message along with you with my recommendation."
H-70 gently cradled the JT-32 in his massive arms, lowered it onto its pallet, and moved slowly out of the shop about a hand span above the floor.
Daub used a winch to raise the next engine onto the workbench, and the whole process began again. A messenger droid raced into the shop, and a recorded set of beeps and whistles erupted from the tiny droid. "R2-R10 reports that all of Grey Squadron's B-Wings are repaired," CR-12 said.
"Good. F-7, tell R2-R9 that the engine H-70 is bringing him right now needs a new check valve for the safety switches line. Also tell R2-R10 to start sending the freight droids up here if they need a stitch or two. When he's done with the A-Wings, have him come up here also."
F-7 raced from the room. He almost tripped Lando Calrissian on his way out, but he darted out of the way and bolted down the corridor.
Lando could scarcely credit what he saw. Daub's workshop thrummed with activity, almost all of it from droids. A line of the machines waited patiently to be repaired in the corridor. Some were fit for the scrap heap, but all of them hoped the "builder" would make them good as new. Directly in front of the door was an aging DD-40 maintenance droid of antique vintage. Lando thought time shouldn't be wasted on such antiquated garbage, and the sight of the DD-40 annoyed him deeply. "What is that doing out there?" he asked Daub indicating DD-40.
Daub looked over to the door and saw the rusting antique at the head of the line. "DD-40s are useful for incidental repairs, General. In fact I have six of them running about the ship right now."
"It's scrap," Lando declared. "It'll be slow and in the way. Why are you wasting your time on it?"
Daub shrugged, "He's quiet and reliable," he said. "I send DD-40s into personal quarters to repair stuff while the crew is sleeping."
Lando was aghast, "While they sleep?"
"Yes," Daub replied. "It takes a while to train a droid to manage that kind of discretion, but DD-40 is the best there is."
"Sounds like an invasion of privacy," Lando said.
Daub returned his attention to the engine on his workbench. "Stuff still breaks weather a person is awake or asleep." He closed the access hatch he was working in, and told EG-4 to power the engine up. The JT-32 hummed to life and EG-4 beeped a positive prognosis. While EG-4 powered down the engine, Daub turned back to the General. "What can I do for you, sir?" he asked.
"The ships just arrived from Mon Calimari. I would like you to look them over," Lando said.
Daub shook his head and motioned at the guards. "They'll get in the way," he said. Turning back to his work he motioned for DD-40 to come inside.
"I need a ship to command Gold Squadron from," Lando objected.
Daub shook his head. "Give these guys a break," he said indicating the guards, "that'll move things along. Or better yet send some of my Wookiee friends here to guard me if you must keep me locked down. These poor guys are exhausted."
Lando was curious. What was it about those Wookiees that made them so protective of Lasck? "How do you know all those Wookiees, Lasck? They all can't have come from the Death Star. Ruthum had been stationed here for years, and he knew you right away."
"My crimes and my victims, General," Daub said with a snort of chagrin. "I'm a terrible man. Didn't you know that?"
"I know you were deeply involved with the Death Star, Lasck, but what does that have to do with Wookiees?" Lando asked.
"I wasn't always the Death Star's builder, General. I owned slaves too," Daub said quietly. The shame in his voice was clear, yet distant. It was clear he didn't like to discuss it, but he was resigned to telling the gambler/General if he wished it.
Lando's eyes widened in surprise, "And these Wookiees were your property?" he asked making the connection.
"Three hundred in all," Daub admitted. "I bought them when I was a Master Chief." He paused then added darkly, "I'm not sure how many survived."
"You're telling me that you owned all the Wookiees aboard?" Lando asked incredulous.
"Not all of them," Daub said, "just their family members in one way or another."
"I can't believe you would do such a thing," Lando protested.
Daub brightened, "That's exactly what my brother said," he said cheerfully.