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 39:3:6.10 The crew aboard the Tydirium...

On a whim, I tried a remote login to the systems on board the Tydirium shuttle, and sure enough, it was sitting in sleep mode down on the surface of the moon.

Logged in using the standard protocols, and I was able to grab the cabin voice logs, and what do I hear but multiple instances of someone being addressed as "Luke".

Oh, this just gets better and better. Vader's kid was on board the shuttle, and Vader just happens to be there for the routine clearance? Give me a break. Something stinks here all right. Vader's definitely up to something. But what?

Just got word that Emperor Palpatine has arrived on base. I wonder if I should try to get in to see him to tell him about these strange goings-on with Vader.

EDIT +10mins
Oh, man, I repeat, this just gets better and better. Vader has taken a shuttle down to the surface. Visiting his son perhaps?

That's it; I'm requesting a meeting with the Emperor.

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 39:1:16 The Emperor's pilgrimage and missing shield codes

Some fallout from the Emperor's pilgrimage trip. He was attacked on Korriban and trapped in an underground tomb for a while! Then, while he was stuck in there, his shuttle got ransacked.

I heard there were some Bothans involved too, a bunch of academics who didn't even have travel clearance to be there, they only had documents for attending the Bothan Cryptographers meeting.

Hmmm. I don't think I'll tell the emperor that those shield codes were on board his shuttle. Well, they're disabled anyway, so there's no real security risk, but he just might blame me for his inconveniences.

And he has been known to have a bit of a temper--I saw what he did to the steward that one time he brought him his vine-coffee with Traladon milk instead of black.

GrS 39:1:15 Bothan Cryptographers meeting

Back from my trip to this year's Bothan Cryptographers get-together.

Sheesh, what a mess!

I hitched a lift with the Emperor for most of the way--he was on his annual pilgrimage to Korriban--and he dropped me off at Bothawui on the way.

Well, I head off to do my talk. The room was jam-packed, standing-room only, and wouldn't you know it, I discovered I had left my data tape containing the codes (and my presentation!) aboard the Emperor's shuttle when it brought me down to the surface.

Boy, did I feel embarrassed, having to get up there and explain that I had no Imperial shield-disabling codes to show them. I said I could still do most of the technical talk, but it seems no one had any interest! Once I told them I had left the codes on board the shuttle, and that it was heading to Korriban, they hightailed it out of there! They fell over each other trying to get to the door. I figured there was a competing talk that they would prefer to hear, now that I had no codes to show them, but apparently, they all rushed for their ships and took off into space!

Maybe they're all secret Sith worshippers or something, because I heard they were all last seen heading for Korriban. Weird.

GrS 34:10:6 Incom defects!

Those kriffing nerf herders at Incom!

The Emperor sent a legion of stormtroopers to help their transition to an Imperial-owned company, and they discovered the place trashed!

The senior executives have all defected to join the Rebels, taking all the plans and prototypes of the new X-wing with them. They destroyed a lot of the equipment too.

The stormtroopers rounded up all the engineers and scientists who were left, but it's pretty obvious that the people who know the most are gone.

Oh, and still no new office. Still stuck in a corner of Hangar 85-G.

GrS 34:10:5 Incom stonewalls the Emperor

Wow, just wow. So Vader and the Emperor got on a conference call with Incom, and tried to make one last effort to get the new X-wing plans and prototypes out of them by diplomacy, but Incom just flat out refused.

The next thing you know, the Emperor makes an announcement that Incom has "agreed" to be Imperialized and become part of the Empire, so it looks like I'm going to get those plans to review.

Awesome. Nice to have someone with some clout and the credits to back it agreeing with your own ideas. Maybe I can arrange to get a proper office, instead of this draughty corner of the hangar.

GrS 34:10:3 Incom's new T-65 "X-wing"

At the Emperor's insistence, Vader sent me to Fresia to tour the Incom facility. They're the guys that designed the ARC-170 years ago, and they had some new starship they were eager to demonstrate.

The T-65 "X-wing" is only in the prototype stage, but it looks like a pretty neat ship--what I saw of it, anyway. It's based largely on the Z-95, and uses a nice little GBk-585 hyperdrive unit, along with some KX9 laser cannons. Somehow, they even squeezed some proton torpedo launchers in there too--once I saw those, I was really glad that we're the ones evaluating this, and not the Rebels. Whenever I see a starfighter with proton torpedoes, I think of that thermal exhaust port on the Death Star, with its thin veneer of ray shielding, and shudder.

Oh, speaking of shields, the X-wing's got a shield generator as well, which makes it preferable to the TIE fighter (which I've heard the pilots call the "space coffin").

I told Incom we'd need all the plans, blueprints, and the four working prototypes before deciding if the Empire was going to make this the new starfighter of the Imperial fleet, and they all got pretty snippy about it and refused to hand anything over.

Stupid--I told Vader about it when I got back to the Death Star, and he agreed that we couldn't possibly make that big of a decision without all the data.

I told him about some of the things I'd seen there, how badly organized they were, all the money getting wasted, that kind of thing, and told him, half-jokingly, that the Empire should just buy the company and make it part of the Imperial family.

He went away actually mulling that one over.

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 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.

GrS 16:5:30 Mystery man Darth Vader

There's some viral security camera footage making the rounds. It's pretty popular around the office, as it shows Darth Vader, Palpatine's right-hand man, wiping out the Separatist leaders on Mustafar. Somewhat gratifying to watch your boss get sliced in two.

But here's the kicker. I assumed this person had been killed when all the Jedi got systematically wiped out by Palpatine (Palpatine said they were all traitors), but who do I see on the video kicking butt and taking names? My old friend Anakin Freakin' Skywalker. Oh, sure he's older, he's changed his name and he's got a real evil look in his eyes, but that's still the guy that received my stolen R2 unit from Padmé.

GrS 16:5:24 All hail the new boss--same as the old boss

Only 16 years after the Great Resynchronization, and we've got a new emperor, so naturally, some toadies are insisting we start all over again at year one. No thanks, I'm sticking with the GrS dates for now. It took me long enough to make all the mods to our software as it is.

Baktoid Combat Automata, always eager to jam an upgrade in, needed or not, are of course adding support for the new dating scheme to their products. Want to see lousy Baktoid software coding in practice? Ask a battledroid when he was constructed, and then ask "What's that in GrS notation?" He'll be stuck there for five minutes while he works it out.

It appears Emperor Palpatine is going to keep the core of the old Techno Union around. That's my group, started by the Confederacy of Independent Systems, or Separatists, as they're mostly known these days. So I've gone from being a lowly Separatist tech to a lowly Imperial tech! Actually, I won't deny there's been some attrition--in fact, most of the senior members were wiped out, including Wat Tambor, my boss. He was murdered^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hlawfully executed on Mustafar by Palpatine's new right hand man, Darth Vader, some weird guy who they say breathes funny and wears black armor all the time, helmet included.

Somehow, I've been kept around, even though not everyone trusts us Bothans. With all the attrition, I'm now the senior tech, so Palpatine's made me an Elite Technician, in charge of the Emperor's secret projects. I hope that doesn't mean I'll have to stop writing my journal though!

GrS 13:5:21 Cat's out of the bag...

The news is out. The Republic must know or suspect we've been working with the Trade Federation, and that we've got this droid army ready to roll. They've granted even further powers to Palpatine.

He's created a Grand Army of the Republic that appears to be fully staffed and equipped already... not quite sure how that happened.

GrS 11:6:1 The Confederacy of Independent Systems

Just had a meeting with Wat Tambor. We are now officially part of the Confederacy of Independent Systems and officially against the Republic. Oh, and that massive droid army? Apparently, that's ours, though no one in the Republic knows about it yet.

Chancellor Palpatine has been granted emergency powers and is staying in office until this crisis is averted.

I'm an apolitical sort of person, but can't help wondering if all the confusion likely to come will make it possible for me to snatch my beloved R2-D2 back at some point.

GrS 7:5:1 Palpatine Supreme Chancellor again

So the Supreme Chancellor elections are finally over, and big surprise, Palpatine won.

Just as well, I suppose. The economy seems pretty good, and there seems to be a lot of work heading our way all the time.

Let's hope Palpatine is still going strong 4 years from now when the next election comes around.