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 39:3:5 Shield codes used?!

Weird. I just noticed in the security log that those old disabled shield codes were just used to deactivate the shield for a shuttle heading down to the surface of the forest moon. Uh-oh. I'd better check this out.

EDIT, +15 mins
The shuttle (Tydirium, by the way) was carrying "parts and technical crew", which seems a pretty generic manifest, if you ask me. But I asked around and Admiral Piett was present, along with Vader, and both were in agreement to clear the shuttle, so I guess everything's okay.

EDIT 2 +20 mins
Wait just a minute. What kind of routine shuttle clearance requires an admiral and Lord Vader in attendance? Something stinks here. What game is Vader playing? Who was on that shuttle?

GrS 36:3:1 Vader's obsession

Maybe I should have kept that Luke Skywalker information to myself.

Some of my buddies in the Navy say that Vader is using his personal fleet of Star Destroyers to look for Luke and the Rebels, tying up all kinds of resources and ignoring a bunch of other conflicted areas to serve his obsession.

On the other hand, I suppose it keeps him out of trouble. Vader, that is. Well, and Luke and the Rebels too, now that I think about it.

GrS 35:4: Advantage, Vader

Well, scratch off any advantage that knowledge might give me. I let the cat out of the bag, just for the sake of petty revenge.

Vader was being a bit of a jerk about something, so I just said, "By the way, did I tell you about that Rebel message board I've been reading? They're really praising the kid that fired the shot at the Death Star. His name's Luke Skywalker."

Vader gave a sharp intake of breath and turned to face me, his black lenses boring into me.

"Yeah, Luke Skywalker," I continued cheerfully. "I wonder if he's related to that old Jedi, Anakin Skywalker? Wasn't he the only human podracer ever? Didn't he win the Vinta Harvest Classic when he was 12?"

"Anakin Skywalker is dead," Vader intoned, and turned to swoop out of the room. "Besides, it was the Boonta Eve Classic, and he was 10."

GrS 35:3:30 Death Star investigation

I've completed my examination of the Death Star records, and managed to piece together some kind of understanding.

First, they capture this "empty" freighter. Then, next thing you know, unauthorized prisoner transfers from cell block 1138 are taking place, then a weapons malfunction in Detention Block AA-23, followed by a large reactor leak. Annoyingly, the officer reporting all this never gave his operating number, so I can't cross-check anything. Anyway, before you know it, prisoners in Detention Block AA-23 are being sprung, garbage compactors are being breached, and there's a pitched firefight in the detention block that finally ends when two groups of stormtroopers realize they've been firing at each other along the hallway.

But here's the thing that's got me all jumpy. All the garbage compactors on the entire Death Star were shut down at one point via astromech droid, using the encrypted protocol we set up. But the ID signature of the droid that issued the command? R2-D2!

He was there! He was on board! And I missed him. If I'd been there, I would have noticed him accessing the controls and I could have found him!

Of course, I could also have been killed when the Death Star was destroyed.

Actually, at first, I was worried R2-D2 might have been destroyed too, but it looks like he escaped on the freighter before the station was blown up.

One more thing--I'm lurking on some Rebel-biased forums, and the word on there is that this hero that blew up the station is some kid called Luke Skywalker. Apparently, he used to bulls-eye womp rats in his T-16 back on Tatooine, which, as some systems guy noted years ago, is exactly the kind of expertise required to jam a proton torpedo down the exhaust port.

But Skywalker? Is that Vader's kid?! I mean, he was Anakin Skywalker, his "good friend" Padmé was pregnant, and her last known destination was Polis Massa, a medical outpost.

I know I'm not the only one that saw that viral video of "Darth Vader" wiping out the Separatist leaders on Mustafar, but maybe I'm the only one that recognized that Darth Vader was Anakin Skywalker. Wow, this is explosive. Vader has a kid. Hardly seems the right kind of father figure though.

Wonder if I can use this knowledge to my advantage?

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 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 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 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 17:2:8 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 17:1:4 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.

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 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.