GrS 39:3:6.80 No meeting with the Emperor

Well, after being put off for several hours by the Emperor's personal secretary, I've come to the conclusion that I won't get to see the Emperor today.

According to the secretary, he's been busy himself, what with, as he put it, "an entire legion of His Imperial Majesty's best troops being shuttled down to Endor." I can only assume the Emperor knows something about this mysterious shuttle and its occupants, then. Unless of course the troops are being sent down there to bring Vader back? Hmmm.

EDIT +5 mins
Just got handed a note from the Emperor's secretary, written by the great man himself. It reads "Be at ease. Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design. It was I who allowed the Alliance to know the location of the shield generator. It is quite safe from that pitiful little band. An entire legion of my best troops awaits them."

Wow, what a nice guy; I guess he wasn't really that upset about the shield codes, then.

EDIT +10mins
Vader is now back on board, with someone I can only presume is the infamous Luke, and the two of them just went in to meet with the Emperor. Vader wasn't escorted by a legion of Stormtroopers, so whatever he's up to, either the Emperor isn't aware, or has endorsed it.

EDIT +15mins
Just heard from the guy next to me that a pitched battle is taking place down on the moon between the Emperor's legion of best troops and a horde of sentient diminutive furry bipeds. As weird as that is, the weirder thing is that the Stormtroopers appear to be losing.


EDIT +20mins
Massive fireball down on the moon! I haven't seen it myself, due to the lack of windows in here, but lots of folks keep popping their head in the door and mentioning it. The shield generator has been destroyed. Unintended consequence of the battle or deliberate?

Just asked someone running by the door if they knew why the shield generator was destroyed. All they said was "Look out a window!" and charged off.

Huh. Think I'll head up to the canteen and have a look out the windows. I'll take my journal with me, as I'll probably stay and grab a bite. I hear they're doing penne all'Arrabbiata today.


EDIT +25mins
Canteen deserted. Just looked out the window.

Oh, fuuuuuuuuudge...

GrS 39:3:1 Stuck on Death Star II

So the Emperor found out about the shield codes, and is pretty upset about it. He thinks I've compromised the Death Star's security.

I told him that I was sure those codes had been disabled, but this didn't really comfort the Emperor, and suddenly, my planet leave got canceled, and I'm listed as being on "special assignment" on board the Death Star for the foreseeable future.

Fortunately, I know that Jerjerrod will have been as good as his word, so those codes to take down the shield won't work anymore.

Death Star II is the safest thing flying. No thermal exhaust port, no stolen plans that I know of, and no rogue shield codes out there. I've got a good feeling about this.

GrS 39:1:5 Death Star II shield codes

So construction on the second Death Star is going pretty well here around the Forest Moon of Endor.

They've got some fancy shield protecting the Death Star during construction. It's projected from the surface of the moon, and there's a complicated set of codes to disable it if you need to land near the shield generator or on the Death Star itself.

Actually, they've just rolled the codes over to a new set. I managed to successfully make the point that old codes should be disabled, to prevent them verifying in the system. The last thing we want is to have older codes that still check out and allow the shield to be disabled. Tiaan Jerjerrod promised to take care of it "soon", pleading how busy he was. After some insistence on my part, I got him to promise that he'd take care of it today, and the old codes would stop working immediately after the meeting.

He even said I could take a copy of the old codes to my Bothan Cryptographers meeting next week, to show off examples of the fine level of Imperial cryptography.

GrS 35:3:26 Death Star destroyed!

What a crazy month! Grand Moff Tarkin is dead, along with a whole pile of other people. The whole Death Star is gone, destroyed by a bunch of rebel kids--using that stupid X-wing fighter design that the Incom defectors took with them and, big surprise, proton torpedoes down the thermal exhaust port.

I was due to leave the conference today, but that's all on hold.

The good thing to come out of this is they never got around to examining my computer system before the Death Star was destroyed, so all the evidence of my indiscretion should be gone.

I'm wondering if perhaps I might be a little bit to blame for all the death and destruction, leaving those plans lying around like that, but hey, I told them that exhaust port was bad news.

The fleet did recover some data from the debris, and they've got me examining the events prior to the destruction to see if we can learn anything.

Darth Vader is pretty cheesed off about the whole thing. Word is, he spent quite a few days cooped up in his TIE fighter trying to locate a Star Destroyer to pick him up.

I had a conference call with him and naturally, he's already talking about building another one. Let's hope he doesn't insist on the same design for the thermal exhaust port.

He's already dodged the bullet on that one, as he pinned all the blame for that design on poor Bevel Lemelisk.

GrS 35:3:12 Getting the heck off the Death Star

Vader approved my request to head off to a conference for two weeks. I told him it was because my system was currently "assisting with the inquiries" on the uprising, so I couldn't do any work anyway.

So I'm off. I told the tech to keep me informed when they'd examined my system. I want to give everyone time to cool off before I head back there.

GrS 35:3:11 Death Star uprising fallout

So Com-scan has detected that a transmission was made from Hangar 85-G to Polis Massa, and the transmission logs retain enough detail to show that it was the Death Star plans that were transmitted.

They know my system in Hangar 85-G was used, so they've confiscated it, but they haven't yet examined it, but the tech said they'd do that in the next week or so, and I should have it back shortly after that.

I think I'll arrange to head off to a conference for a little while, just to make sure I'm safely out of the picture when my system is examined. I don't want to be here when they find out the plans the Rebels sent were the ones on my system, and they connected to the Polis Massa database via my shortcut.

I'm also not really comfortable with the idea of the Rebels having a copy of those plans, not with that exhaust port problem.

Of course, Vader still doesn't believe it's an issue, but the Rebels have the plans and a small starfighter equipped with proton torpedoes.

Yeah, I think I'll take a break for a few weeks. Avoid any fallout from the Rebels and the Imperials.

GrS 35:3:10 Death Star uprising!

There was a big prison outbreak here just last week. I'm not really sure why they've got the detention block populated when we're not even at full crew complement, but that's the Empire for you.

I heard the alarms, but I was in the bathroom at the time, and figured it was just another drill. But when I arrived back at my cubicle, what do I see but a Rebel prisoner messing about with things.

The Stormtroopers broke in and settled things down, but I'm a little concerned with what that prisoner was doing on my system.

I'm thinking that leaving my Polis Massa database shortcut on the system (from when I was tracking down R2-D2 in GrS 16:6:18 and hacked in) wasn't a great idea, and the shortcut to the partial Death Star plans was definitely a no-no.

An audit of the security logs on my system showed that the prisoner accessed both of those items. I sure hope nothing untoward happened there.

GrS 33:3:25 Declaration of Rebellion

Looks like we're in for some interesting times again. A group of dissidents has authored something called the Declaration of Rebellion, accusing the Emperor of a number of crimes.

He's pretty annoyed about the whole thing and has declared his intention to "crush this insignificant rebellion and all those who support it." So much for the office pool theory that he'd extend an olive branch and commence unilateral talks with an eye to instituting reforms. Ha! Kidding. That was a choice, but no one put money on that one.

Oh, and I've been stationed on the DS-1 Orbital Battle Station or "Death Star" (sigh). Vader spends most of his time here too. I brought my computer system and everything with me, as I'm expected to continue churning out new designs for the Empire, but they wanted me to oversee the installation of some of the systems I helped review.

The whole station isn't quite finished yet, but it's close. It looks really good. Can't wait until they try out the superlaser!

I don't even have a proper office yet, but I've set up a sort of impromptu R&D area in Hangar 85-G.

GrS 17:2:8 Astromech droid review

Reviewed plans for the astromech droids to be used on the "Death Star". With every system (except the tractor beam) controllable by astromech droid, you just know we're going to need them.

Apparently, in spite of all the sudden-death turmoil going on there, we managed to agree last week to license the R2 design from Industrial Automaton on what Vader calls "very favourable terms." Hmmm.

So not much is changing. Vader doesn't want to bother buying the thruster jet mod, because he hasn't seen any R2 units use them in a few years; it's like R2 units equipped with them have forgotten the jets exist.

I asked about dropping in a speech module. It wouldn't cost much, a few decicreds at most, and the R2 units would be able to communicate properly. Nope, said Tarkin, no added expense. Besides, that's what protocol droids are for. I pointed out that needing a protocol droid every time you wanted to talk to an R2 unit would be more expensive than adding the speech module. Anyway, everyone knows protocol droids are annoying, prissy-as-hell silver and gold prigs.

Vader shot me down this time. "At least they're respectful," he rumbled. He added that some R2 units he'd encountered were pretty mouthy, and adding speech would only "exacerbate an already unpleasant conversational experience."

GrS 17:2:1 Industrial Automaton in difficulties

Wow, what is going on with Industrial Automaton? They're the astromech droid guys, and it seems five of their board members died suddenly this week. Man, and I thought things would be going well there--word is, we're going to use IA's R2 series of astromech droids for the new space station (yes, the "Death Star". Sigh). Nice fat contract for them.

GrS 17:1:4 Death Star review, day four

The emperor's been reading the minutes and, according to a very disgruntled Vader, agreed with me about the astromech droid thing, so we spent the first part of the meeting talking about building an authentication protocol into the astromech droid control panels. I managed to get everyone to agree on the old Techno Union Encryption Protocol, so only astromech droids modified by us can use the panels.

It's the same protocol that I built into R2-D2 years ago. They don't know it, but the encryption key I selected for the Death Star is the same one I used with R2-D2. I chose it in memory of him.

After that, we moved on to atmospheric systems and environmental, during which I caused a bit of a stink, if you'll pardon the pun. I mean, I understand about the interior doors and bulkheads closing automatically in the event of explosive decompression. I even agreed that isolating parts of the station to preserve the atmosphere was a good idea, but no one seemed to understand my point that the circuits were so sensitive that blaster fire at the controls would set them off.

"Do we really want captured Rebels running around and locking all the doors by blasting the controls?" I asked.

"What rebel invaders?" Tarkin snorted.

"The ones who are looking for the tractor beam," I started to say, but then I got the look from Vader, so I shut up.

The last things reviewed were the reactor and thermal systems. I noticed that there was no protection for the thermal exhaust port as there normally is--a physical protective cover so torpedoes and bombs can't be dropped in--and asked about it. "It's okay," said one of the system guys, "it's fully ray-shielded."

"Ray-shielded?" I asked, incredulously. "That won't stop a proton torpedo from a determined pilot."

The system guy snorted. "Look at the size of it! You'd need a pilot who could bulls-eye a womp rat in a T-16 to even hit it. Besides, a ship small enough to get in there is too small to carry proton torpedoes."

"Okay," I said, shrugging. "Anyway, I assume whoever designed this wasn't dumb enough to have it lead directly to the reactor."

"Why not?" Vader asked then, sounding annoyed.

"Are you serious?" I asked in surprise. "Any kid right out of school will tell you that an explosion in an exhaust port will trigger a chain reaction that causes the main reactor to go critical and explode. That's why they're always shielded against energy weapons and usually mechanically protected against proton torpedoes. No competent engineer would allow a design like this off his desk!"

The system guys all glanced at each other but didn't say a word, and Vader made some very annoyed breathing noises, and it suddenly occurred to me who the designer behind this scheme might be.

"On the other hand," I said, as I saw Vader's hand coming up in a classic force-choke maneuver, "the point's well taken that no ship small enough to get in there is likely to have proton torpedoes."

Vader's hand went back down, and we finished the rest of the review.

Before leaving, took a copy of the data tapes for the station. Just in case. Told Vader I wanted to study them on my own time. Not sure he believed me. I didn't realize, but even these tapes have got a standard astromech droid hookup port. Don't know why you'd want to transfer a load of data tapes into an astromech droid, but if you needed to, you could do it in a hurry with these. Sounds like a security risk to me.

Anyway, I transferred the data tapes into my system here, so I can look at them whenever I want. They're not actually the full set, only the bits we were reviewing, but I'm not really interested in the rest of them anyway.

I talked to Bevel Lemelisk a little after the meeting, and yeah, he said that he'd wanted to remove the port altogether, but Vader had disagreed with that decision, so it got left in.

GrS 17:1:3 Death Star review, day three

Looked over some suggested plans for the tractor beam. Caused a bit of a fuss when I saw the recommended way for turning it off. Tarkin said he didn't want any captured Rebels sneaking around, shutting it off easily and then flying away. I asked him if he was going to be in the habit of capturing Rebels and then letting them wander the station at will. The meeting degenerated rapidly after that. Finally, Vader spoke up and endorsed the "power-switch-on-a-catwalk" plan, so I shut up.

Funny footnote: somehow, they remembered my astromech droid suggestion from yesterday, so hooray, the tractor beam is now the only system that can't be overridden by astromech droid. I can't wait for the day someone accidentally snares Vader's TIE fighter and then has to explain why he's got to go crawling along a narrow catwalk to shut it off.

GrS 17:1:2 Death Star review, day two

Second day of "Death Star" review (boy, do I hate that name). Some political correctness has reasserted itself and the station's official name will be the DS-1 Orbital Battle Station, though Vader went to great pains to make sure everyone understood that "DS" stood for Death Star.

Tried to argue today that putting an astromech droid control panel at all the computer terminals was a security risk. As usual, no one listened. So great, anyone who cares to invest in a bog-standard astromech droid can override just about any system on the base. Even some farmboy loser from Tatooine could visit his local Jawas, snag a stolen astromech droid and take over the Death Star. Brilliant.

GrS 17:1:1 Review of plans for new space station

Today, it was a pretty boring review of plans for the new space station. The station looks interesting, but man, did we get bogged down on the little details.

Did some brainstorming of names with the group. Mobile Imperial Enforcement Globe. The Palpatine I. Expeditionary Battle Planetoid. Friendly Neighbourhood Imperial Dome. Vader suggested "Death Star." Gee, what a surprise from the guy who insisted the battle cruisers be called "Star Destroyers."

No one liked my final suggestion of "I can't believe it's not a moon!"

Oh, and apparently parts of this design came from Geonosian Industries years ago, but had been floating around the Techno Union and Separatists for years, so I can expect to see a lot of the same old dumb mistakes I've been seeing for years.

Construction's been taking place for a couple of years already, but that's really just the main superstructure. Lots of opportunity to change the internal systems at this point.