28. Management Lessons

To say that the New Republic had had a busy month would have been to face criminal charges for premeditated and malicious understatement. The Yuuzhan Vong invasion would have been bad enough on its own, but with the Republic's military crippled and its government decapitated by the Chaos infiltrators, it was by several orders of magnitude the worst crisis that had faced the galaxy in living memory – and there were sentients there who had lived for a very long time.

With Ponc Gavrisom dead, the obvious choice to replace him as Chief of State would have been the woman he supplanted during her hiatus from political activities, Leia Organa Solo. Unfortunately, they had lost contact with the sector she had been visiting along with her family during the initial strikes, and whilst Luke wasn't too concerned about his sister's fate – if all they'd been through so far hadn't killed them, he highly doubted a massive alien invasion would do the job – this did mean that a massive power vacuum at the heart of the political sphere still existed. It had been filled, of course, but not in a way he was entirely pleased with.

Borsk Fey'lya had won a great deal of acclaim for his actions during the attack on the Grand Convocation Chamber – even discounting the exaggerations and urban legends that had appeared in the aftermath, his decisive leadership during the evacuation had undoubtedly saved a great many lives. When one factored in the relatively large percentage of his supporters among the survivors, his inauguration as Acting Chief was almost inevitable. In fact, there were a few ugly rumours floating around that suggested that last fact might not have been entirely coincidence, though this was not a theory that Luke personally agreed with. The attack had been far too sudden and unpredictable for anything requiring that level of organisation to have taken place, and for all his oft-proclaimed mastery of realpolitik, Fey'lya just wasn't a good enough actor for that expression of utter horrified astonishment he'd worn when that assassin had made its presence known to have been anything other than genuine. The Jedi had felt the fear bleeding off him.

Even if he had suspected such an occurrence, though, what he saw when he entered the Presidential Office would have swiftly put paid to it.

There were many terms that could be used to describe the Bothan politician. 'Confident', if one wanted to be polite. 'Smug', if one didn't. 'Oleaginous', if one wanted to be actively insulting and had access to a thesaurus. 'Utterly defeated', on the other hand, was rather a new one.

His eyes were red. His suit was rumpled. His fur was dull and unwashed. If Luke had been so inclined, he imagined that he could have scanned the room's atmosphere and found traces of more than one heavy-duty intoxicant tailored to work on Fey'lya's species. He looked, in short, like someone who had attained his life's ambition at the precise point at which it had suddenly turned to ashes... which was appropriate, really, seeing as that was exactly what had happened.

"We just lost the Ithor system," the Bothan said without preamble. "Only three defence lines remain between them and Coruscant. So why did you want this meeting, Skywalker? To gloat over my failures? Some clever little riff on that speech I was giving just before the invasion? I hear those are quite popular with the media these days. Who always picks the wrong side? Borsk. Who is the unreliable paranoid? Borsk. Who is more interested in his own standing than the wellbeing of the Republic? Borsk. And now, joy of joys, he's in charge during the Republic's biggest crisis. We may as well surrender right now, mmm?" He looked blearily at his guest. "Is that what you were going to say?"

Luke briefly considered beating some sense into the political leader of the Republic, before dismissing it as counterproductive. The field tests of Master Breet Noh's Pacification Fist technique would have to wait.

"Actually, no," he replied instead, as if to one of his students back at the Praxeum. "In fact, I think you made some fairly sensible arguments during that speech. We were taking a lot on faith, for a start. You weren't wrong because of any personal failing, Mr. President – we simply had not encountered a threat of this nature before. Misjudging the completely unknown is nothing to be ashamed of – the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, for instance, managed to catch the entire galaxy off-guard. We're still having to re-evaluate accepted strategy against them."

Fey'lya chuckled bitterly, indicating the paperwork littering his desk. "Tell me something I don't know."

"Besides," Luke continued in the same calm, reassuring tone, "we need some debate here and there. We wouldn't be a functioning democracy otherwise. Just because I don't agree with your opinions most of the time doesn't mean I can't respect them – after all, there's nothing like having a devil's advocate around to shore up holes in your plans."

The Bothan still looked sceptical, but slightly mollified nonetheless. "So my entire worth to the Republic is as an unconscious devil's advocate? I'm touched. Very well, if you didn't come to intentionally insult me, what was the actual reason?"

"Simple, really. As the leader of the Jedi Order, such as it is, I wanted to officially pledge my support and offer any assistance available during this crisis." Keeping a depressed, angry, and very, very drunk Chief of State this side of sanity had not been on the schedule, but Luke prided himself in a thoroughly unpridelike manner (a piece of bizarre mental judo only a Jedi could or would want to manage) on his willingness to adapt.

This eventuality was not entirely unforeseen – ever since Bothan politicians had started using psychiatrists to gather intelligence on their rivals (a practice started, ironically, by Fey'lya himself), those interested in such matters had started taking bets on which paranoid, therapy-deprived celebrity from that species was going to have a spectacular public breakdown first. Luke did wish, though, that it had been someone slightly less integral to the galaxy's continued functioning.

Fey'lya waved a hand dismissively, almost knocking over a holoprojector in the process. "Oh, formalities. I see. Fine, fine, you've made your point, Skywalker. Now go back to figuring out how you can capitalise on my downfall, there's a good human. Try to get it done before the Vong turn up on the doorstep, won't you?"

I will not be annoyed. Annoyance leads to anger... anger leads to hate... hate leads to suffering... "Perhaps you fail to understand, Mr. President. I want to help you."

Fey'lya stared at him, his gaze disconcertingly level. "Why?"

"Because you're the leader of a galaxy in crisis. I could go on about how a Jedi does not pursue personal ambition or let emotion compromise reason, but I won't. The Republic stands on the cusp of annihilation. To further mire it in political dispute now would not merely be unthinkable to a Jedi, but to any adequately-functioning sentient."

The stare continued. "You may not be aware of this, Skywalker, but reports from Intelligence indicate that there are no less than three separate coups being planned against me by different Senatorial factions."

There was a moment's silence. "... I stand by my earlier comments."

Fey'lya barked a laugh, dispelling much of the tension. "So what assistance should I expect? Omens? Palliative animal sacrifices?"

"Mostly, I intended to send my students and myself in to assist at major hotspots in our remaining defence lines, but I recognise that our lack of numbers would ensure that we contributed little in such situations. I have been training them in astral projection, though, perceiving the universe through the Force, and several of them have shown considerable aptitude there. We could track enemy fleet movements with a high degree of accuracy, in addition to bolstering our communications network." He allowed himself a rare, mischievous smile. "That said, we could always cut open a bantha or two on your desk as well if you really want."

By now, Fey'lya was smiling as well, though Luke suspected that he would not appreciate discovering this. "I may hold you to that, Skywalker. One can't be too careful, after all. Was there anything else?"

Luke chose his words carefully, very aware that he walked on treacherous ground. "Ah... may I offer some personal advice?"

The Bothan frowned in distaste, but gave a short nod nonetheless. "Once. Make it good."

"We both know you have a difficult job here," he said, drawing another bitter laugh. "I know a few things about pressure, and I know one of the best ways to deal with it is to talk to someone else about it. Find someone you trust, Mr. President. You'll thank me for it."

To the Jedi's astonishment, Fey'lya actually seemed to consider it for a moment. "Fair enough. Get in contact with Ackbar – I suspect he'll want a full evaluation of the Temple's assets. Given that nice little speech you just made about cooperation in the face of adversity, I'd advise that you not hold anything back."

"Of course, Mr. President," Luke replied politely, accurately translating this as the Borsk equivalent of a farewell.

As he turned to leave, he saw Fey'lya hold up a hand in the universal 'wait a second' gesture.

"Ah... Skywalker, you are aware that I see you as a sanctimonious, superstitious demagogue, not to mention a dangerously disruptive influence upon the Republic as a whole?"

"Just as I see you as grasping, self-serving, and a walking demonstration of the worst excesses of narrow-minded xenophobia and soulless ambition? Yes."

The Chief of State looked infinitely relieved. "Oh, good. Just wanted to be sure."

Luke left the office considerably more sanguine about the future of the Republic than when he had entered it, and yet had no idea why. The fact that his Force-enhanced vision had shown Fey'lya discreetly tossing a small black bottle into the waste-disposal chute as he walked out might have had something to do with it, though.


The problem, Borsk reflected, was not a lack of willingness to do his job. One of his central goals in life had always been to ensure the wellbeing of his species, and in this situation, this meant ensuring the wellbeing of the Republic. It was a lack of ability.

Throughout his political career he had specialised in power-brokering, using what others wanted to get what he wanted. Unfortunately, he already had most of the galaxy's resources at his disposal – even Pellaeon of the Imperial Remnant had pledged his support – and they were still losing. Worse, the Vong apparently wanted little more than the reduction of every world in the Republic to a smoking cinder, and there really wasn't much leeway you could obtain from that.

So what other factions are in play? Ah. Of course.

He turned on the holoprojector and placed a call to his secretary, a young Bothan by the glottis-mauling name of Ekar Tre'lak who he had retained from his senatorial days. Though he was sure that selecting someone from one of the more marketable minority species for the job would have been better from a public-relations perspective, he always preferred to work with what he knew.

"Miss Tre'lak, can you contact the research and development division, please? Ask them to recommence work on the Spiral Driver project. ...Yes, yes, I know I said it needed to be terminated. ...No, they still haven't figured out a way to deal with the side-effects, at least as far as I know. Just trust me on this, would you? ...Excellent, thank you. And if you could get in touch with the ambassador for the Time-Space Administration Bureau as well, I'd greatly appreciate it. Tell her I wish to discuss a new trade agreement."

He paused a moment, rubbing his long muzzle pensively as he recalled Luke Skywalker's words.

"One other thing. How long have you worked under me now? ...Really? Good grief. Perhaps some form of reward would be in order, and besides, I think I need a break from the workload before it drives me slowly insane. I know of a rather nice little restaurant in the Ambassadorial District, and was wondering if you'd care to join me there for dinner tomorrow – assuming, of course, you have no prior engagements? ...Excellent. I'll book a table."

As he ended the call, Borsk realised that this was quite possibly the first time he had invited one of his secretaries out for a meal without the express goal of starting an illicit affair with her. Well, this should prove interesting.

He sat back to await the Bureau ambassador's reply, and the resultant meeting that might well change the course of the conflict. There was nothing quite like being able to act for once to put one in a good mood. Now, if only he could remember where he'd put that brandy...

Beside him, the chute processed its hideously expensive contents with the same mechanical disinterest it reserved for everything else.


Rossiu was not unused to pain.

Much of it was unintentional on his part, a legacy of a hard-fought life. He still remembered the ache of the wounds inflicted during his brief career as Gurren's pilot, the numbing shock across his jaw when Simon had saved him from the depths of despair, and the razor-fine agony when a suicide bomber had expressed his considerable annoyance at the government's continued, institutionalised inaction re: the voices in his head. More recently, there were the curious, phantom twinges that still speared out from his new mechanical arm's elbow despite the complete lack of any sort of nervous system in the general vicinity.

Some, though, was self-inflicted, such as the very personal, private pain he had developed a habit of subjecting himself to in his spare time, reading through the eulogies, epitaphs, and obituaries of the billions who had died in the Chaos attack. He was not a masochist, and he did not believe that it constituted any form of atonement – he had atoned in the past, and knew that it tended to be rather more involved than simply remembering the dead. For the President of the Spiral Nation, this ritual was simply a necessary duty. It was far too easy, he knew, to see his citizens as statistics, numbers on a graph that one could spend like any other resource. Some measure of perspective was required, a reminder that each of those numbers represented a person. So it was that he read through the endless lists of the departed, and grieved for their loss.

There was a soft knock at the door, and he looked up, smiling, as Kinon walked in. During the decades of his incumbency, the fact that his presidential aide was also his wife had gone from minor scandal to simple fact of life. She was, and it didn't stop her from being very good at her job. That was all there was to it, really.

"I have the latest reports on the situation of our military here," she explained, indicating the vast stack of paperwork in her arms. "Our Grappal forces are halved, our fleet has been reduced to a tenth of its original strength, and the Chouginga Dai-Gurren is still not operational. We have lost contact with eighteen systems due to interference from what our allies refer to as the Warp, and one hundred and sixty-four major military outposts are known to be completely wiped out, not to mention several thousand minor ones. In addition, civilian casualty patterns show that a disproportional amount of those who died possessed the high concentration of Spiral Energy that would have marked them as potential Ganmen pilots, though given the random nature of the killings, we don't know whether this was deliberate or not. Correlation does not guarantee causation, after all. Estimations on how long it will be before we can properly mobilise our forces again range from two months to six, given the comprehensive dismantling of our command structure."

Rossiu winced. He'd known it would be bad, but this was worse than he'd thought. The rebuilding of their military would clearly need to involve a good, long look at their tactical and strategic doctrine. Whoever had decided upon the genius idea of having a single, gigantic battleship pilotable by only one in every few billion people comprise ninety per cent of their naval firepower was going to get a serious yelling-at, too.

"And the good news?"

She managed a wan smile and set the stack on his desk, where it teetered precariously. "Fortunately, there is some. First off, Spiral Energy's known ability to make a mockery of statistics may halve that figure on the mobilisation. Second, our industrial capacity was relatively unharmed, and Leeron's 'Spiral Driver' system has gone into full mass-production. Even if we can offer the Bureau and their friends limited direct assistance for the moment, we can at least arm them properly. I also took the liberty of sending them one of the Space Grappal regiments uninvolved in maintaining order over here, which should give them an edge in the initial counterattack."

"Good decision. And the civilians?"

"Casualties were heavy, but you already know that. Reconstruction of those urban areas damaged in the attack is going well on most planets affected, though, and citizen morale remains high. They just want to get back at the... people who did this to them." Her eyes flashed behind her glasses. "Believe me, they aren't the only ones."

He reached out an arm and stroked her hair reassuringly, drawing a rather more genuine smile this time. "What's the status of the emergency report?"

"Ready to air when you give the word." Her lip curled in disgust. "Uriah wanted to adjust the footage for extra emotional impact, as tailored to their known psychological profiles. Demolished schools, victims cherry-picked for their resemblance to... certain figures, that sort of thing. I shot him down as soon as I heard about it. It'll be going out clean. I presume that was the right decision?"

Rossiu sighed. "Do you really have to ask? What happened is enough. They'll come anyway, and I have no intention of lying to them any more than I have in the past – especially not in such a tasteless manner. Honestly, I can never be sure that man remembers what sort of government he's working for. Remind me to get a new PR specialist once this is over, will you?"

Kinon tugged a sheet of paper from the middle of the pile and flourished it triumphantly. "Already formulated a list. The asterisk-marked companies are known for their integrity and ethical standards – I thought you'd be especially interested in those, given how scarce such qualities are in the business."

He chuckled in a quite unstatesmanly manner, and drew her down for a kiss. "Whatever would I do without you?"

"Still be the most eligible bachelor in New Kamina City?" she asked, her eyes dancing playfully.

She would never have flirted with him like that twenty years ago, he reflected some time later. She had always been so serious, so very earnest about making a better world. For that matter, so had he – well, he still was, but that was no excuse for not retaining a sense of humour. It was amazing how people could change, really.

Two faces appeared before his mind's eye. Hopefully, they hadn't changed too much.


Karrast Six was on the very frontiers of Spiral Nation territory, a recently-colonised world that was expected by the corporations responsible to be a very lucrative investment thanks to both its considerable natural resources and even more considerable natural beauty. The tourists had not yet arrived, though, and neither had the major mining interests. Instead, most of the planet's population consisted of small, hardy groups of cartographers, prospectors, and scientists, dedicated to mapping out the planet and making a quick buck in the process.

One such team was camped out in the mountain range designated VX-1274, a spectacular forest of snow-capped peaks, plunging, green-walled gorges, and distant, glittering waterfalls that in no way deserved such a brutally prosaic name. In fact, some of the more poetically-inclined explorers were already trying to come up with a better one.

It was evening, the camp illuminated by a daisy-chain of electric lights, and everyone was gathered around the holographic viewer in the main tent. Sometimes one of them would curse incredulously, or stare at the display in silent paralysis as the studio reporter outlined exactly what had happened to their civilisation in their absence. One couple held each other and wept, whilst another carefully avoided each other's eyes.

Halfway through, one of the guides, a large, taciturn man known to the others at the camp only as 'Old Si', got up and walked out of the tent. He packed up his few possessions and flew away aboard one of the team's two clapped-out Ganmen, not even saying a single goodbye. The ancient mech returned the next day on autopilot, homing in on the camp's uplink tower, but its cockpit was empty of both the guide and his strange little pet.

Nobody was able to come up with an adequate explanation for the man's sudden disappearance, but that was hardly unusual. He had always been something of an enigma, offering no explanation for his presence on the expedition, and it only made sense that his final removal from their lives would be in a similarly uninformative vein. A few suggested waiting for him for a couple of days, pointing out that he had been a useful member of the team despite his oddities, but the time passed without him reappearing and the camp moved on.

Their last act whilst in the vicinity of VX-1274 was to ceremonially pour a bottle of alcohol onto the rocky side of one of the range's outermost foothills, offering a simple benediction to those suffering so far away.


The Littner Memorial Academy was widely considered one of the finest primary schools on the planet, with tens of thousands of applicants per year and a collection of awards that could have easily covered every wall of its sports hall – a particularly impressive feat given that said hall was a repurposed Ganmen hangar from the War of Liberation, found buried beneath the island. Though she would surely have protested otherwise, everyone knew that this was largely due to the efforts of the school's founder and headmistress, Miss Yomako. They might have been surprised, therefore, to learn that two days after the news broadcast, she was preparing to leave.

It was not as hard as she had expected. She'd been training her young deputy Sumeragi well, and was confident that she could take over in her absence. In fact, she wondered if she had been doing so in case exactly this eventuality would occur. That train of thought was quickly abandoned – she'd never been very fond of introspection. There was no telling what she might find.

Whatever the case, the end result was that at the end of a busy day balancing the school's books and talking to prospective parents, she found herself booking a place on a private orbital shuttle, carrying a long suitcase under her arm that contained several large metallic objects that might have caused anyone who saw them to wonder exactly what classroom discipline at her school entailed. Twenty minutes later, she had begun the first leg of the weeks-long voyage to Naval Command in the Iolaus system.

Considering her fame and the length of her career at the Academy, she had had remarkably few goodbyes to make, but she dismissed this as irrelevant as well. The Spiral Nation needed her, and that was all that mattered.

Absent-mindedly, she tucked up her hair with a skull-shaped clip.


Author's Notes: Yes, Gurren Lagann fans, those people in the last two sections were exactly who you thought they were. Not that I really bothered concealing it, mind. You may commence rejoicing... now.

In case you hadn't noticed by now, it is my mission to give most of the (expansive) cast in this a moment of sympathy, a moment of badassery, or both, and yes, that includes Senator Fey'lya. The guy may be faced with the unenviable task of having to do some serious growing-up over halfway through his life, but someone who possesses the bounce-back rate he does in the EU can't be wholly incompetent, right?

See you next week!