GrS 23:4:5 Attack of the (anti-) clones!

Haven't written in a long time, but had to jot this down. There was a huge uprising on Kamino--the Kaminoans were building their own "anti-clone troopers" to try to defeat the Empire. Boba Fett led a whole bunch of stormtroopers there and wiped out the new cloning facilities, but Palpatine is seriously upset.

I heard he called a meeting with Vader and wanted to know why Vader hadn't foreseen this vulnerability, and ordered him to open up stormtrooper ranks to clones from different facilities, and to recruit from the general populace.

Vader claimed he'd asked about this, and been told it wasn't a problem! Well, that got me pretty mad, so I fired Palpatine off a copy of the minutes of our meeting from 16:6:14, almost seven years ago, when I suggested this very possibility, and Vader shot it down, so Palpatine raked Vader over the coals during the weekly conference call in front of all the Moffs, saying "We will pay the price for your lack of vision!" Vader was so mad when he got out of there, he had to force-choke three captains, a TIE pilot, and a field marshall before he calmed down.

I probably shouldn't have sent those minutes, but I was mad. I sure hope Vader doesn't realize it was me. Man, I should talk to Tarkin, see if he still sells those force-choke protective collars on the side.

GrS 16:6:14 Working closely with Vader!

We've been pretty busy lately. Turns out the Emperor has a LOT of secret projects for us to work on...

They mentioned we'd be "working closely" with those closest to the Emperor, and in today's meeting, who should get introduced but a sinister guy dressed all in black. "This is Darth Vader, the Emperor's right-hand man."

Sure, Darth Vader, the man in black. But I've seen the Mustafar viral video, and I know that before the armor went on, this guy was Anakin Skywalker, stealer of R2 units.

I'm not sure what happened between the wipe-out on Mustafar and now to give Vader the breathing problem and the black-suited armor, but I'm guessing a serious butt-kicking was issued. Nice.

I hope whoever it was got in some shots for R2-D2 along the way.

Everyone seemed scared of Vader (I've heard the force-choke stories too, of course), but I wasn't having any of it. I straight out asked him, "What happened to that R2 unit you used to hang around with, you know, the one you took from the people of Naboo?"

A silence fell in the room. The dry hum of the ventilation system was like the dry wind blowing over a lonely Tatooine plateau. Even Vader's asthmatic rasping seemed to have stopped.

"He exhibited... divided loyalties," Vader finally intoned. "Something to which you, I hope, are not going to fall victim."

"Oh no," I said, much more cheerfully than I felt. "I'm all Empire, all the way. I guess you knew he was serving on the Tantive IV now? Captain Antilles from Alderaan."

"Indeed?" asked Vader, sounding interested. "Thank you. I shall certainly be keeping a close eye on Captain Antilles and the Tantive IV from now on."

Oops, hope I haven't made life difficult for Antilles now. Oh well, I'm sure he'll keep his nose clean for the next few years, until Vader forgets about him, or loses interest.

Oh, and the clone troopers are being renamed. Apparently, people are paranoid about dealing with them after the whole sudden instant defection thing, and the plebes don't trust them. So they're going to be renamed "stormtroopers". Oh yeah, that sounds friendlier. Wonder if Vader had anything to do with that name? Anyway, they're going to redesign the uniform as well, so they don't look the same.

We talked for a long time about the style of the uniform. I tried to argue that, as long as we're changing the uniform, we should adopt some sort of armor that's resistant to laser fire, but Vader said that researching new materials would be too expensive, and we should just stick with the old material. I said, "What about the cost of human life?" and Vader replied that "troopers, like technicians, are cheap and easy to replace." I let it drop.

I also suggested that we incorporate clones from somewhere other than just Kamino, as a single clone template makes the trooper ranks vulnerable to disease, sabotage, corrupted cloning vats and so on. Vader said it would be too expensive and besides, Kamino made the best clones, and the Kaminoans were completely trustworthy.

GrS 1:3:8 More on the mystery budget expenditure

Did a little digging around in the accounting computers. Some of those folks use the same passwords for everything!

That 5 million credit expenditure that killed our profit last year was paid to someone named Jango Fett for "clone template and training services."

Did a little more digging, but can't find anything out about what clones he's training or where. Just my luck to get my funding taken away by a black project. I can't even protest about it to anyone, because I'm not supposed to know. Sigh.