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 17:2:1 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.

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 16:6:8 R2-D2 visited Polis Massa!

Did some thinking about things. The Jedi that took charge of Padmé would have wanted to get her to medical care as soon as possible.

The closest place that would have been friendly to them was Polis Massa, so a little bit of hacking later, and I had all the information.

The only ship that left there was the Tantive IV, and sure enough, not long after that, Raymus Antilles, captain of the vessel, logged registrations papers for one R2-D2 droid with Industrial Automaton. He's listed on the papers as being a gift from Padmé Amidala, the last registered owner.

So the little guy is still out there. Now I've just got to get him back.

After all the work hacking into Polis Massa, I've left a nice little shortcut in my system, so if I want to get into the Polis Massa database again, it's just a couple of clicks.

GrS 16:6:6 More secrets from Mustafar

Some more digging around for Mustafar security footage has revealed some interesting details.

Although my little R2-D2 arrived at Mustafar with Anakin Skywalker, they did not leave together.

I've got footage showing Anakin (or Vader as we must call him now) force-choking Padmé... I've long suspected they had a thing going, and Padmé looked pregnant. I've seen human females in that condition before. But what kind of person tries to destroy his companion and his unborn child? That's cruel, even for a human. Wish there was sound on these videos though, as it looked like some heated words were being exchanged.

Anyway, after that R2-D2 left on Padmé's ship, presumably dismayed at the whole force-choking of his former mistress thing. He always had a good moral sense.

Oh, and that Tatooine protocol droid was there too, being all chummy with R2-D2. Hmmm.

I'll tell you, Padmé didn't look at all well when she was carried into that ship.

I wish I could figure out where that ship was going. Then maybe I could find R2-D2.

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 13:8:12 R2-D2 chilling with the Jedi

R2-D2 has been spotted on Coruscant in the company of Anakin Skywalker! A gift from Padmé to Anakin (and what's going on there, I wonder?).

And now Anakin's a Jedi Knight, working closely with the Jedi Council. So much for getting R2-D2 back--good luck trying to prise something out of the Jedi Council. They're cheaper than a nerf herder on his first visit to Coruscant.

GrS 13:8:10 Padmé ditches R2-D2

So Padmé is still a senator, but I've been hearing from friends on Coruscant that R2-D2 doesn't follow her around anymore. Not sure where the little guy is at the moment, but I'll try to find out. I don't like the uncertainty.