Dace Rendall - The Veteran

[Intrepid42]

The Veteran

Dace walked casually into the apartment, the door sliding shut behind him. He looked about, the physical tell-tales were still present, indicating noone who wasn’t very skilled had entered, through the main door at least. Brief interrogation of his modified door lock mechanism showed nothing suspicious had been registered on the small sensor module he’d hooked up to the unit.

His entry ritual complete, he shrugged off a backpack and headed to a workbench. He slid an actual folder containing actual printouts from a drawer and opened it. Turning over a few schematics of some of the huge ancient machines that still powered critical systems back home in the Coruscanti Underlevels, he looked at the printouts stacked beneath, adding a transcript of one recent conversation to them.

He had been careful, as had any of the rest of them still loyal to the Cause. Maybe he had little to fear. He wasn’t passing secrets to the current set of invaders, nor selling supplies to the Cartel. Public domain information and insights were their stock in trade, their very reason to be.

But once one believed that hidden cabals of Force users had been behind things. Everytime a world burned. Everytime a child cried. Everytime a soldier didn’t come home. Once one believed that, then one couldn’t trust any system. Holonet-based or otherwise.

And so he stored edited public domain information and transcripts of his own conversations off-line. Off the grid. On print-outs in a folder. The connections, the insights, the hidden stuff. That was in his head, or brief communications.

When trying to stay under the grid as a simple ex-Corpsman making his way in the Galaxy, that was a smart way of doing things.

But now that he was literally sitting across from an enemy, that for all he knew could read thoughts like he read schematics. So now in his head was the worst place for secrets to be.

Deliberate ignorance wasn’t going to work. He’d seen too much. Knew too much. Malachor. The Leviathan. Whatever twisted corruption of space the Dark One had sat in.

Maybe resynchronising reverberation cyclers in his head might work. Sandra had flat-out stated it could. And that was another thing. Black Ops. Ex-Jedi. That holocall. What did they know?

Crud. He’d become relevant. Again.

And he didn’t like how things worked out the last time. His unit hadn’t been been anywhere near the control room. But they helped keep the Mass Shadow Generator online right to the end. There’d been no viewscreens or live feeds. But they were systems engineers the lot of them. They could see the gravwave feedback, and knew what it meant.

But they thought they knew their duty, even with their fellow Engineers scattered throughout the fleet and groundside on the doomed planet itself. He’d told himself it had been worth it. And maybe he’d believed it. Until He had come back. Revan.

He ran through manuals and instructions in his head. From long study and training his memory was well-organised and seemingly spacious. But focus didn’t come. Anger did, though. Anger at Revan. Anger at everyone else who turned traitor. Anger at himself.

Maybe anger would be his shield. Fortunately, he had plenty of that.

[Intrepid42]

Regrets

Dace rested on his second-favorite recliner, booted feet up on the desk. He idly flipped through some hard copy documents, a rare oddity in a galaxy long-connected.

He was engaged in the time-honored pastime of drowning his sorrows in drink. Or, as he would perhaps wish to deem it, running an experiment on the effects of strong intoxicants on long-term memory. It was a measure of his current situation that this was not entirely a foolish endeavour.

He noted to himself that it certainly made his recollection of these evenings hazey. Whether or not that would help him the next time some Inquisitor got handsy with his brain’s… what did that Jedi Librarian say the memory bit was… hippo-camp or something? Anyway, it was an open question. And it didn’t help the quality of the notes he was now trying to piece together.

The problem was… what was the problem again? Oh, that’s right. The problem was that he wasn’t ready for this drek.

They had thought themselves so smart… and so RIGHT. Those of the 373rd and a few fellow travellers who had made it back from that charnel house at Malachor had been thrown together by chance, hardened and durawelded by grief and loss. And they were smart, all of them. He owed the Captain for that voxelcode and some other tools he used. But there were… too many connections.

Some of the others had been mouthy on a few matters, with good reason, but there it was. And that was fine when it was just a bunch of de-mobbed veterans that no-one would listen to, grousing to each other during ever-diminishing reunions. But not so much now.

And there was everything else. Half a lifetime of watching over a tiny slice of Coruscant’s slowly degrading infrastructure had taught Dace the value of patterns. The calm spot in a maze of static. Well, now that was him. He’d put a lot in backchannels, and any half-decent sweep would see a lot less holonet traffic than a mid-rim tinkerer ought to have. And that was fine a year ago.

But not so much now. This place broke things. Lives. Minds. Careers. But not him. Not yet. He was still here. Thanks to the empty shoes of all those broken lives, he was sort-of XO of a permanent squad doing operations that were pretty special as operations go. SpecOps in all but name. Only they were Navy, not one of those myriad other groups that wandered about in the kath nest that was the Republic’s ancient bureaucracy. And the sort of operations that were special, well, they made him wish all of a sudden that the higher-ups weren’t taking his reports literally. Even though he was underplaying the sort of drek that went down on this rock.

He was… well, he was for sure on someone’s drek list, more than a few maybe. So he’d gone dark, and cut ties as much as he dared for the moment. But his unerasable past might raise suspicions eventually, certainly if they kept promoting him.

He’d just have to keep fumbling about and try to do the right thing. It helped that there were some good people out here on this rock. But trying to do the right thing had caused plenty of memories he had trouble forgetting. And the stakes kept getting bigger.

Like back in Level 1325 running Life Support. Air was life. Only there was a spectrum of air quality. There were points on that spectrum where death came, but in tiny slices, stolen away over years. And one day he’d had an attack of the morals, and shunted a little bit of the filtration back where it was supposed to be, reversing some decades-old bit of creative vandalism. Only it turned out that some real old alien who was involved in that was still about, running a bunch of unregistered hydroponic farms in some cheap warehouses rated only for storage.

And he came looking. Pressed for time, Dace logged the changes to a fake-stolen ID belonging to some old supervisor who took bribes to shunt the freshly filtered air to where the richer folks wanted it. That old retired bastard had ended up in a cushy apartment up in 2000, and maybe he didn’t deserve that sort of attention, but Dace wasn’t feeling picky at the time.

He’d learnt from that, and gotten a bit more subtle. But the choices he’d made still nagged at him, especially at times like this.

But the real regret, that was Kunuluuth. He’d admired Revan, as had pretty much everyone else. But by all the drek below, Revan had been a ruthless one even back then. Kunuluuth had been one of the worlds he stripped of defenders to give other worlds a fighting chance. Which was scant comfort to the citizens of Kunuluuth, really.

He’d met a girl on his extended posting there. Dace had got her and their daughter off-world, not quite at the last minute but pretty close to it. Only she’d had people back there. He’d tried to get a few more off, but it was hard enough getting space for one-and-a-bit. And so everyone she ever knew was dead, bar a second cousin or two who had understandable feelings about the whole thing. He’d convinced her to leave in the end. Women with a nursing infant are real focused. But she wasn’t in a good place after. And they’d largely gone their separate ways.

It was probably better that she blamed him, for her and the kid. Better anger at him than herself.

[Intrepid42]

Squadmate

A ship sits in deep space. After a few hours of silent running, a brief link is made, and a encrypted signal is routed via a local holonet node.

Revanchist forces continue to strengthen despite recent ship losses over Viscara. Czerka corporate flotilla being sold off. Decreased Czerka threat perception despite Sith Empire advances further evidence complicity. Mytaranor Sector Navy remains underfunded and stretched thin. No further public domain force incidents/threats. Other groups possess growing proportion private shipbuilding and financing. Will likely tilt conflict.

The ship jumps to hyperspace on the first of several hops, and Dace disconnects and scrubs a pair of devices. The war was truly growing desperate, and the current permissions to use private craft and custom equipment opened up a range of possibilities, despite the relatively strong monitoring programs in place.

He was more able to transmit his largely public domain information to a tight group of former and current Republic military personnel. They were all veterans of Malachor V and loyal to Rillun Artax, once their host ship’s Captain and now somewhere in Republic Navy Logistics trying to keep a low profile. Outside infiltration of such a group that did not recruit new members was difficult, which had it’s advantages. Their purposes and beliefs had diverged somewhat since then, but all shared a belief that the Sith influence in the military didn’t entirely leave when Revan did.

But the risk remained high. His previous activities were less well hidden. And the list of survivors of Malachor V was not a long one. Dace believed they were all already under some degree of monitoring by someone somewhere, just for being on that list.

He didn’t like restarting this level of activity. But a friend, someone who he respected and who deserved a better deal, might need help. And if he was going to call in a favor or three, he needed credit in his account well in advance.

[Intrepid42]

Betrayer

Dace stood behind the control chair, gripping the chair’s back tightly with both hands as he practised running his angry thoughts through his head, again and again, staring blankly into the black night of space beyond the cockpit windows.

The trigger for this impromptu practice session blinked on a plain datapad thrown under a console. The … ‘requests’ … once decoded, were for ever-more detailed information on local events and operations.

That had been simple enough until now. Most of the various factions in the sector leaked like sieves. Wait a few days and edit the various holonet broadcasts. Done.

But now his position and actions gave him access. And this was Known and expectations heightened. Havoc Squad wasn’t a Covert team. Not by a long shot. His ex-partner had even seen his face on one of the public MilNet channels. His anger faded at the thought. Actually, that was kind of cool. The message she’d sent had almost been friendly.

But that still left him with the problem. Those like him who’d been crew of that thrice-damned MSG or it’s support chain had always been relatively few in number. But they had been disproportionately represented among the Republic survivors in his old unit, for obvious reasons. And they’d tended to be more senior with more proven capability. Ironically, it was probably the Commendation old Captain Artax had given him that got him and his former squad on that thing. Hundreds of thousands of commendations had been handed out, but few for running Life Support. It probably made his squad an easy pick if someone wanted an “All-Star” team quick. It had been one of the factors that meant his old unit had a rather higher survival rate than most.

But things changed, as they always did. War veterans always bore a burden. And those from Malachor V bore scars unique to themselves. And those connected, however involuntarily, to the deed, they bore a burden again. Another of that very select group-within-a-group had died recently, apparently of disease. Dace’s head told him such things were to be expected, the screams in his own head were after all never far away. But his heart told a different, more angry tale. There were many whom might want the ex-crew to disappear permanently, and sadly the list of such could be very long indeed. On all sides of both conflicts. It was impossible to know for sure. And in his uncertainty a perhaps-justified paranoia had long set in.

And so their numbers, and influence, fell. And others in their slowly-diminishing band had felt more free to blame or hint at their perhaps-understandable resentment of those who were not purified by distance to the mechanics of the slaughter. Others in their group of disgruntled vets turned amateur sleuths turned … what were they now? The secret guardians of the liberty of the Republic as they had once imagined, or mere sources to be worked by whatever place in Navy Plaza then-Captain Artax and his closest associates had found?

Either way contact had been noticeably less friendly and more mechanical. And the last visit to “check his temperature” had been some time ago, ostensibly because of his current situation. Fine, maybe if they wanted a source, he could be a source.

But that would mean steadily increasing betrayals of the others. The new squad.

The Boss. The fire burnt strong in him. Necessity would change him, and he’d be like the others eventually. But not for a while. As long as he could master his taste for women who weren’t just Trouble spelt with a capital Thesh, but TROUBLE spelt in all-capitals. Still, Dace wasn’t in any place to say he had done any better.

The quiet marks-twilek-turned blade user. Who in the midst of unending war had managed to shack up with and turn perhaps the first of the other lot he knew had defected. And whose gear was even now finishing ship after ship in workshops scattered across the system.

The ex-Mercenary who even now was trying to fight the entire Sith Empire on her own. And not completely failing at doing so.

Then there was ‘Her’ apprentice. A lone forcie facing the kinds of crud Havoc saw on a weekly basis walked a hard path indeed. But Dace didn’t believe in coincidences and the warning that She was ‘watching’ was probably enough on it’s own to force a decision. He had to be compromised. Why he wasn’t already in a cell next to Sararen was probably the only true mystery here.

And the others. The quiet one who was more capable than she let on. The child of Kashyyyk with the insane aptitude for hardwiring capital ships and their own motivations. They all had their flaws and secrets. But fate and design had thrown together a group with stupefying capabilities. If they could only … work together better? No, they were doing just fine, really. Losses were down, way down. There was a time when the Navy could lose ten troopers per Mandalorian and think that was a good day. Even at their lowest, the squad fought for every life.

So. Who to Betray?

His grip on the back of the chair was no less tight, and his stare into the abyss no less than before, as he stood quietly in the cockpit. And thought.

[Intrepid42]

Commander

The terminal blinked off. And Dace pounded the console in frustration.

“Damn Revan. Damn the Force. And… damn me”

He leans back and thinks, as he was wont to do.

He looks back at the terminal screens before him.

His head told him the “good” of the Republic, or some bits of it, was served by letting it happen.

But She might get the wrong idea. He didn’t want to be shoving the responsibility to another. Or did he? He just didn’t /know/ about these things. At least he could be sure his lack of Officer training wasn’t the lack here. He was pretty sure the standard curriculum didn’t cover force drek.

Decision time. Was his fear going to taint a decision that might claim another’s very being?

He tapped on the controls, and a contact he knew too much about, but never sought was highlighted.

Decision time.

[Intrepid42]

A Squarer of Circles

Thank you, Ca Jor.

He peeled off his boots and raised a dutifully non-intoxicating drink in a silent thanks to one Havoc Actual. Possibly four hours sleep beckoned, as his particular brand of jury-rigging of the main Shield Generator emitters would require some personal attention until the Outpost techs could replace the mess of bypasses and patches that rush job had entailed.

But what he probably could never tell that big furball was that being able to trade information, if not precisely under formal orders, but close enough to hopefully satisfy the big Blackops shadow lurking in his very near future. Well, that might just have swung things for a bit. Maybe.

Certainly ‘She’ had been complimentary about the recent other matter. Whether that meant being fattened for a kill, was perhaps not completely excluded.

But it was clear a crack-down of sorts was underway that didn’t have anyone knocking on his door. Another one with a history of various contacts was on the out. Was it possible Command never knew? Crud, maybe he should have checked that. But a tangled web was a tangled web. And he’d chosen a version of that path for himself a long time ago.

Between the pacifist, the smuggler and those long-ago dealings with the Lord, he did seem more able to bite his tongue and be polite with various contacts. And certainly a few had noticed, as he kept getting assigned those kinds of jobs. Was that a danger? Would someone wonder why he seemed comfortable with that?

On further thought he sighed and took a sip. Who was he kidding, given recent events Command was probably just thankful he wasn’t flirting with Initiates.

He set the glass on the desktop and eyed the workscreen in front of him. He’d given his old Captain, the face of the Cause, some of the good stuff. Chancellor level intel rated pretty high on the old favour scale. Could be he had enough in the tank to help the Boss with his ex-wife problem. Because he wasn’t going near his girlfriend problem if he could avoid it.

But he hadn’t pinged the Cause that Blackops had to be monitoring him. I mean, that was always kind of assumed to some degree given their lineage. But lucky old Dace Rendall, in particular. Maybe he could lend them another layer of respectability. Or maybe he’d just sold them down the hyperlane. Drek. But choices are choices. And staying on the team mattered. Events here mattered.

And the circle looked square for the moment. It’d have to do.

[Intrepid42]

Trident’s Shield

No official had any concern about his actions. Or something similar. Recollection was hazy. But that… was probably better than anyone else got. He should be thankful.

Neither he nor they had chosen to speak about things openly. Maybe that was… to preserve their options in the future? Who knew. But he had seen enough of their hearts to trust that they would do their best for the Republic. Maybe not the Republic he knew, huddled masses in the depths of Coruscant and scattered across a million worlds. But a very close approximation.

He could work with that. And it didn’t hurt that their local faces were good enough people doing good things. More and better things than him, so far as he could tell.

Because what he had seen out here in those long months was enough to Doubt. It was still very plausible that hidden cabals of Users lurked then and even now in the heart of the Core Worlds. Those who held to the Cause were not wrong.

But out here? Cabals there were, but there was nothing hidden about them or their aspirations. The path he had once chosen. It was… not the path for this place.

So… what could he do? He knew he was useful. In a few areas few could do what he could do. That had burdens of it’s own.

He had long practiced the grim arithmatic of life and death. Running Life Support for a million people in the trickiest and worst Sectors the Level 1325 Coruscant people could find for a trouble-shooter had started the process, and nothing he had done since had made it less useful. Improve ventilation here, and downstream gets a little less airflow. Unless you make a further change. Then another.

Everytime he ran the equation he concluded that Ca was right. By the numbers. Right to hold him on Trident. Right for Dace to stand there and watch Javelin die. Thornton. Entire squads of Havoc. People he knew and cared for.

But he might, might have been able to do it. Breaching pod right through the gaps in the rendered hull. Bypass and emergency reboot of Javelin’s shields. He knew how. Repurpose the crap out of the circuits and generators, it would just have to last long enough to finish the battle. He might have done it in time. One life to save thousands. Grab Feya or someone else from space for Ops.

And Yet.

Victory had cost. But it was still a victory. And for all that victory cost, defeat cost much more.

A load he had long born had been lifted. Probably. But replaced by another. And the screams each night from Malachor were still right there in his head.

He finished the glass in his hand, leaving the bottle of spirits still mostly-filled. If one plotted the course of Dace’s recent career by the pace at which bottles disappeared, then this was decreasing. He was improving in his control.

A new day would dawn, and he would don the mask once more. Be what he needed to be.

[Intrepid42]

Author

…knowing that your daughter passed while serving the Republic hopefully brings you a small piece of comfort in this difficult time. All who knew Petty Officer Sola Alows speak of her pride in the Navy and the Republic she volunteered to serve. She made many strong friendships during her service, and she will be remembered for her kindness and strength in adversity…

…though nothing can take away the pain of this passing, you should be very proud of your husband, Crewman Mine Delste. He was a fine young man, and his watch-mates have spoke of how he manned the airlock onboard RNS Trident, ensuring every last engineer that could was able to board a pod, at the cost of his very life…

…I have sent communications to a contact at the Japrael Sector Veteran’s Association. You can expect them to contact you in the coming weeks. Please do not hesitate to reach out to myself or them if you need anything at all. We all share in this loss…

One. After another. After another.

But the task fell to him. Such was Duty.

It would be Done.

[Intrepid42]

Redeemer

Alarms blared and Dace threaded his way through the organized chaos of Trident’s response. The bridge beckoned, and dire need.

The plot did not look good, nor did the condition of the bridge systems.

Four corvettes were scattered in an interrupted pincer move from either flank, and their coordinated boarding action rocked even the bridge, yet distant from the fighting.

But their own moves were in play, and in the end they had numbers. They would prevail, regardless of the grim compromises made to give every slave out there a chance at survival. A chance of freedom.

Ship’s can speak, and in their own language. A speech of frequencies, emissions, patterns. And at times, as here, the staccato thrum of damaged systems and the transmitted echos of combat growing ever-closer.

Though shields and armor held, Trident was Hurting. The enemy had gone all-in on this assault. Circuits and monitors had been sabotaged, but enough remained to tell general patterns. Their own garrison sparkled on the plot following Ca’s moves with Kairos at their centre, and Avom’s squads moved in from the hangar bay.

Numbers were not everything. In the end this was Their ground. Their Home. And Dace knew it like few other. They would prevail. They Must prevail.

A few moments had to be spared for the wider battle. Information was sought. Orders and intentions were stated. Tasks were delegated.

The hostile Thrantas’ distant voices told their own tales.

Vagabond. Weakened. Growing still and silent under Kayta’s withering glare. Whatever secret plans were concealed there would not matter for the next moments.

Needle. Controlled violence. The force they had sent there would not be stopped by mere hatches or bulkheads. Or floors. They would Prevail.

And Manacle. Noises on Comms. The faint pattern of emissions fading that were once there. Speed. Precision… Litheness? Far too many seconds spent contemplating that image. Dace forced himself to move on and return to the plot. There was a battle here to be won.

Bulkheads sealed. Chambers vented, further damage inflicted on their home to remove just a few more invaders from the Mothership. She would understand.

His shipmates moved through the passageways as freely as Dace could arrange it. Damage control parties directed in a haze of recalibration and desperate reconfiguration. The diminishing garrison moving to hold, or flank from points of advantage. The enemy thrown as many obstacles as possible. Most were droids, requiring a different touch. Precious circuits and capacitors blown to disrupt and delay at key moments.

In the end it was done, the last invader sealed away, felled or vented into the beyond.

And however inevitable the treachery of Saber, their weakness had bought time, and precious reserves assembled to bear watch on them. For a moment it had seemed not enough, and that hundreds of imprisoned souls would fall victim. But it proved to be Enough.

The Republic had swooped in. The Basilisks, so strange and unsettling to see as allies. The pods launched on a hair trigger by the most relentless of shipwrights. And their lone gunship, waiting patiently for the right moment, that surged forward with perfect timing at the last.

It had been done. All of them had done well. So well. He would make sure to tell them all.

Close to a thousand souls with no say in their own fates freed. Ships and Hope restored, for the battles yet to be fought.

A thousand souls to set against the debt he had incurred on Malachor. The tally of salvation was shared with others. But so again was the debt. A thousand souls less. Sleep would come easy tonight.

[Intrepid42]

Problem Solver

Well. That was. Not how he had expected that problem to evolve. But rather more pleasant than any option he had considered likely.

But possibly no less dangerous. If at all.

Dace idly scratched his chin, already bestubbled some hours after his last shave. And he considered his situation and felt that he had a new problem. And like any good engineer, Dace felt a problem needed a solution engineered for it.

A problem adequately defined is half-way to being solved, as they say. So he needed to define the problem.

… Correcting for unknown natural history of process, and distant history. Correcting for known or suspected traitors-criminals. Predicted mortality rate less than theorized from available sources, even given margins of error. He is not as they were. And if he turned as they did then he would deserve their fate …

… The Leviathan? Didn’t know that. That changes numbers. Crud, she must be up into the tens of thousands by now. That’s a lot of saves, statistically. Assuming he never advanced in skill or rank he should probably just let things happen as they would. If that’s what helped Her do what she did …

… Wine from Coruscant (?Type assume 50:50). Assume expensive vintage. Cakes. Explosive Charges. Combination of all three? No, likely to be counter-productive. Mountain flower, unknown type (remote odds). Negative on that. Go with Plan A …

… Average sleep improvement 1.2 hours per night, with trend towards further improvement. She had helped him so much, was all this really wise for an uncertain risk? No, he would not be a burden for her. He would at least action the deadman protocol …

… Mission reports from other Republic-aligned personnel suggest pre-recorded message advising abandonment unlikely to affect chance of failed rescue if he was targeted as an indirect attack on Her. Best chance seems providing early indication of danger, location and course to reduce hostile preparation time …

… Intra-muscular or abdominal implant? Likely subject to early detection and neutralization by competent foe. Hypothesis: Trap implies single site of operation. Own equipment likely to be taken to same site. Utilize something on person most of time, sufficiently indicative of useful intel to escape blanket neutralization …

… Final plan is a dummy but apparently highly secret alternate datapad, kept against person in modified backpack. Shielded case. No direct hypertransmitter. Utilize modified holonet links. Ubiquity of holonet leads to assumption of neutrality. Encrypted attempts to route micro-signals indirectly to Mon Cala consulate. Utilize known contacts in Cause. Likely not high-priority Sith targets, but possibly on Blackops watchlist providing notification backup. Deadman protocol allows actuation even if unconscious or deceased, at cost of requiring 12-hourly interactions. Best current option …

… Backup device in boot heel. Disguised as dampening coil for magboot assembly. Limited range and not interference-hardened …

Later…

An expensive bottle of whiskey and a single glass is sealed into a clear-fronted box. Lights flash and alarms sound. The sense of the dramatic soothes his nerves somewhat. The box lowers itself on a mechanism into a heavily reinforced crate that closes and seals itself. The crate is then lowered via cargo lift into a storage unit under the deckplating, blast doors closing over the top. It does not have “Open in case of Emergency” written on it. But it might as well.

It was done. Worse-case scenarios had been prepped for. And in the worst case scenario, it was at least a /very nice/ bottle of whiskey.

[Intrepid42]

Chief Engineer

His face streaked with grime and sweat, and the fatigue of several hours work, Dace dropped nimbly from the overhead access hatch to the deck below, and turned to one of those with him.

“98% will not do, Mr Malmsteen. This is not the Valiant, nor the Emerald Spar. Nor even the Veltraa.”

“This is Trident. The shield between the people we protect and the sadly not-unknown horrors of the Beyond. Run the entire length of the port auxiliary conduit again. We’re done reconditioning here. Replace every section where there’s a packet loss, and report back to me if you can’t beat 100% of spec by day’s end. Ca will sign off on the reqs. If we have to I’ll comm Mon Cala and ask Weilliln for a custom unit. Dismissed, and get to it.”

One of the teams hastened away to recommence work, and Dace stalked down the corridor to his next fix-it point, customized datapad in hand and a team of engineering staff in his wake. Young, too young, all of them. Half of his people had been snatched for RNS Thorn, once the ISS Zenith and the scourge of the Mytaranor Task Force under the now-deceased Captain Thornton, though it had taken watching their flagship Javelin burn along with everyone aboard to put an end to that threat.

They had been replaced, of course. Even with the travails of war, the one thing their Republic of a thousand thousand worlds did not lack for was willing blood. The recruitment pipeline continued to pump. Though every tranche seemed younger and greener than the last. Keen though, almost to the last. A volunteer military fighting what might seem a losing war did not attract the uncommitted. But there was never enough time to train them. And they kept poaching away the ones he did train. Not enough time, there was just not enough time.

Rank and position had indeed made his former problems more manageable, but had come with even-greater responsibilities to match.

Right now, safe in his fastness, he did not fear Sith. Either sort of Sith. But dangers closer to home also lurked. Whether he was aboard or not. Whatever scant preparations he could make. His concern was that his people here could find themselves driven by duty and orders into armed conflict with, not Mandalorians, for in their current state any political threat there was surely years off, but a particular subset of Mandalorians.

And those associated with them. Many of whom he knew. Rather well. Kriffing hells, one of them had even largely purchased the original hull he walked in now with their own sweat and blood.

He had made his case obliquely to the Commodore. For to say too much. Would have by definition been saying too much. Especially with the others there. And he needed to keep his position here. He could do things, achieve, protect, like he could never do piloting a stool at Jim’s. Or a brig.

There would be time enough to speak more plainly later. He hoped.

The irony of this situation did not escape him. He had finally achieved some measure of resolution between the road he had travelled and those watching his present. Only to find that his new road was much the same as it had always been. But much much more immediate. At least what he had come to believe had also been his interrogations had been much more pleasant than they could have been.

---

---

He paused in a long corridor running through the heart of the ship. Through a long window in the starboard wall the thick casing around one of the primary enabler chambers for the ship’s main array could be seen, leading into the agrocite energizor beyond. A powerful weapons system indeed, and one that had performed well in testing, though it had required some small reallocation of the hull’s interior volume.

He rechecked his readings, then glanced at the faces next to him. So young. Their faces trusting him, his reputation whispered through corridor and barracks. He looked back out the inspection window, and stared for a time at this, yet another of the systems he struggled so hard to perfect.

If conflict came. And if he had to choose. He would choose them. Duty demanded no other way. Damn this kriffing war.

[Intrepid42]

Revisiter of Past Ways

Dace exited one of the spaceport lifts, striding down one side corridor and taking a hard right at a particular blast door. Responding to his authorization, it hissed open, and after a brief exchange of electronic noise the main ramp of the ship within descended.

Unlike one year prior, his usual location now saw considerable movement of personnel in and out. Hiding away was not a function of leadership or responsibility. Physical tell-tales had long since passed into uselessness. But from a certain point of view this ship was an airtight and mobile chamber. One where every panel and cable had been laid according to his direction, or at least general supervision, down to the individual shield generator capacitors. As such a reasonable level of security could be achieved. Against most prying eyes, at least.

Brief interrogation of his systems showed nothing unexpected or unauthorized had registered on the various sensors and monitoring programs in place.

He headed to a workbench. As he had done so many times for so many months, he opened a locked cabinet hiding in plain sight, and took out an actual folder containing actual printouts, and opened it. From the back he took out a number of sheets of flexible plastic, crammed full of complicated notations and diagrams. Setting them on the work area, he added a few more from a case, and started up one of the more secure terminals he had, in theory isolated from any network.

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He had once treaded carefully and lightly, less than a whisper in a crowd. And achieving about as much.

Nothing about his current existence could be deemed careful. And yet he was perhaps safer than he had feared. As Someone had said when asked about this very question, “It is simpler for soldiers and the navy. You have deeper rules and regulations that automatically paint the stage for your actions to be viewed positively.”

Irony built on irony. He had come to terms with the Cause, that long-held belief that secret cabals lay behind things, being a distant truth less relevant to his current Duties. But scant weeks later he had come not just face-to-face with a Sith on Coruscant, but a vast and ancient being once servant to a yet vaster and more ancient being. And dropped a shipping container on it’s head. Even that had not quite been enough by itself, but had weakened it enough for friend and ally to do what was needed.

That such things had dwelled almost in plain sight on the upper levels no less, not buried in the depths, and that yet more existed out there… had caused him no end of reflection.

Those of the Cause? They were RIGHT. More right than they could possibly know. And yet he did not tell them. Because then they would wish to know more. Much more. And so that door laid… quiescent… except for occasional trickles of information to keep contact active. He had made his choices. Two weeks later? He might have chosen differently. But it was Done.

Irony built on irony again. Despite all that his position and tools allowed. Here he was again, scrambling in the dark like a night watchman in a warehouse, bearing only a single lightpack.

Sets of images appear on the screens in front of him. Dense with information, passive thermal imagery in all it’s multi-coloured blotchiness interlaces with bars summarising passive EM activity. To the initiated, they show a progression of increased complexity, of a pair of ships caught in moments of time.

Unlike other potential investigators, he was Chief Engineer of the Cruiser Trident, it’s systems modified and fine-tuned by his very hands. He knew the tools that had captured this data better than any. The question was what value any of this had except to document what was obvious to even cursory visual inspection. Subtle the hull changes in question were not.

He looks over one of his hard copies, bearing his notes and recollections of running a EW Package on the Lietuva. At Kozovis IV, now a half-forgotten sacrifice in defense of the law-abiding. But he did not forget. Could not. His department had died there, before his very eyes.

It was becoming a matter of more general concern. The electronic intrusions alone would see to that. But his own thoughts kept coming back to points he hit a wall on. What WAS Mechu Deru, really? How scalable will this prove for them? Was there a missing four hundred? And most importantly, how does he stop the fate of The Howling Kath from afflicting his precious Trident?

He looked up and eyed the readouts once more. Further enlightenment had not come.

He continued to tweak his EW algorithms. And he had supplied the Others with what he had. Hopefully they would be able to take it further. These were matters beyond his scope of understanding.

If only they were also beyond the scope of what he had experienced. Or might yet again.

[Intrepid42]

Planner

The video recording before him ended, yet again, no less horrifying for the rewatching.

Millions of lives swept aside on Vercon 3, oceans and mountains boiling into vapour and mist under the barrage from above. From the Sith. Again. Masters of two wars and possibly not entirely innocent in the third.

There was a War to win, and he would do his part. Malak’s head on a pike, with as few lives lost as possible. And he’d be flexible on whether or not he was there to see it. If the Revanites finished the job for them, so be it.

These long months. He had kept his eyes open. And Ears. Certain contingencies had come to mind, but been set aside. Until now.

The Sith did not, could not, trust their students with too much. Ere they grow too strong too fast, and destroy teacher as well as student.

But they had their ways. Classroom-tombs, hidden away by various means, and containing the force-locked data storage devices they called holocrons. Means of bypassing generations, and imparting the knowledge of the veterans amongst them to the students of students of students of students.

Hidden meant hidden, and not easy to find. And he knew they could be relocated, and hidden in places less stereotypical than stone sarcophagi. But all the same it was their weakness. Something that could be targeted. A way of stopping the cycle. Or at least slowing it. Lest there be a fourth war. The death must End.

He was not the first to think these things. But unlike another he had bitten his tongue. And bided his time still.

He flipped a pair of hardcopy schematics onto the workbench. A demilitarized corvette rendered capable of refit away from a dockyard. And on the other, a similar craft rebuilt around a central orbital autocannon, and done so away from prying eyes.

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It could be done. Their slaughter had given him the tools to learn, and learn, and learn again. If need be he could probably even pack something suitable into a bulk freighter. He was not so far down his path that he failed to be horrified at the ease by which destruction could be wrought on life and craft alike. But there Had to be a reckoning for what they had done. And the Republic has shown it did not have the Nerve to do what Needed to be done. To break the cycle.

Earlier slaughters had not moved him so. Kunuluuth, upon which his daughter’s mother’s family had burned. Cathar where a friend had lost so much. Perhaps the clans had seemed too ordinary a culprit. But perhaps it was also his growing skill in craft. If anything it looked too easy to him now, veteran of so many refits and cold calculations. But that it had not been done before, that he knew of, told him that many many barriers surely existed. Overconfidence would surely lead to detection and defeat.

He would need to continue building his target list. They would need to be visited before the inevitable response caught up with him. As many as possible. A matter of calculation and probabilities. That he could do.

He, or another, would need to survive this current struggle. And be free to act. Getting brigged for some lesser offense could not be on the table.

He would need a hull. If he continued his current path obtaining such a ship would not be the least of his challenges, but not the greatest.

He would need a crew. This would be the rub. The make-or-break. He was not a people person, despite a certain learned experience in handling others.

He knew he was far from the only one to bear rightful anger at the wounds inflicted time and time again on the innocent. But how many would be willing to cross that threshold into action without cracking under the immense strain and betraying the plan? That would be the greatest challenge, indeed.

He must be careful. Once again. But so long as conviction survived. He had Time.

[Intrepid42]

EPILOGUE

A battered-seeming light freighter sets down on a landing pad, somewhere in the Mid-Rim. For a moment before touch-down, the unusually-well tuned and synchronised repulsorlifts and drives might give a trained observer clues that this craft was not all that it seemed.

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A human male walks down the ramp, face clean-shaved, hair long and augmented goggles across his eyes.

His name was different now, preparations long made as contingencies put into play. Ties severed. Comms silent. The ‘Fast Garrison Leave Shuttle’ used for it’s true intended purpose before being switched half-way. In retrospect the ship’s name might have been too much of a give-away.

His apparent past was threadbare, the trail of his data activity lean. Once this would not have been enough to shield him, during a year of striding across the frontline. But now, in perhaps lesser times, it might be enough. For a time. Those who hid successfully for decades did so less frequently than they hoped and with a careful silence and quietness. But a life in hiding was a life wasted. There were still people he could help, just on a lesser scale than his earlier corvette plans. Builders needing protection. Takers needing hindering. Penances perhaps to be paid.

He had made mistakes, that he knew. So many. Perhaps the greatest at the end. He had believed rumour and scuttlebutt that his alleged warcrime was the Hutt Cruiser. A foe so implacably hostile and aggressive right to it’s end that he had believed conspiracy and corruption must be behind that charge.

But no, if that last final comm was to be believed, the final verdict was to see him stung with the fate of the second Hutt frigate. He had to admit to himself that was an entirely more reasonable charge, and perhaps spoke better of Command than he had thought. It was an action not entirely his own doing, and that he could have defended… perhaps… but perhaps not. What was done was done.

Perhaps his achievements and the sum of those he had saved might have purchased mercy. If only so much of it wasn’t buried or suspicious in seeming… as Sandra had said to him “your dossiers all have unique notations”. As in, multiple Intelligence dossiers. Lucky him.

As it was, he doubted any sensible Warden would put a man capable of bypassing the hunter Lord Howl’s stealth with off-the-shelf components in Minimum Security. He would probably be lucky to smell natural air once per year. If that. No. He would take his chances. For so long as that lasted.

His daughter… a chill gripped his chest for a moment, though his legs kept walking. The endowment would go far, and she would have the education and prospects that he had never had. But… she might never know his company, should she wish it in her adult years. His other family too… knowing of their son or brother as someone who had ended up a deserter, a war criminal. Of everything, this had given him the most pause. But he had gone into things eyes open.

The Navy… they would have to do without him. The Mandalorian gambit… had not been a success, and prevented him from using the vast tools available to the Navy to save anyone else going forwards. However, his bet on that one particular Aliit’alor over the others, and what scant precedent of cooperation they had been able to continue, might yet have some subtle influence on the future. Would that, in the end, preserve enough life to be worth the cost in blood and lost opportunity? He could not say, but could only hope.

Time… there was never enough time. Speedy and Ira in Fleet. Kairos, Feya, Zalea and the other enlistments in Havoc, and their compatriots in Cresh. His ‘exit strategy’ as he had deemed it, had been doing well. But he worried there had not been enough time to season them. However, if Command wanted to throw away everything he could yet have done, then in the end he could not stop them.

The Cause… ties had been cut with them, even more so. Already thought less of for being ex-crew of the Mass Shadow Generator, they might have even less time for a deserter, though in time the precise reasons for his charges might soften that. So be it. He would keep trying to do what he could.

And finally, Ca. That magnificent, oft-naive but resolutely committed Cathar had been friend and companion through so much struggle. Zenith. The unspeakably powerful Chancellor-level-classified threat. But he was not willing to follow Ca blindly into custody, or worse. He had seen what the Republic was capable of, how easy it cast it’s tools aside once they proved inconvenient and no longer useful. Malachor V had taught him much in that respect, as in so many others.

He paused, thoughtful, feeling as if he had forgotten something. Someone? In the chaotic weeks towards the… end… his system of relying on even his own well-organized memory to keep things secret. Well, it had become strained.

No, he was… fairly confident the key issues had been taken care of. The lesser stores on RNS Icebox would have to find their own destiny, but the greater stores on RNS Peremptory had been made available to his successors in service, along with his latest prototype Generator. Everything else… would just have to rely on Fate, if the Jedi’s oh-so-consistent beliefs in that were true.