[right][h3]Callagher – The [i]Paragon[/i], Orbiting New Plympto[/h3][/right][hr]
The [i]Paragon[/i], second among the sleek new [i]Optio[/i]-class Fast Attack Cruisers off the Hosnian Driveyards lines, drifted through space some thousand kilometers above the surface of New Plympto. The ship was cruising at an angle such that the crest of the planet’s horizon lay ahead, far off in the distance through the bridge’s wide trapezoidal viewports. 

Callagher stood next to Captain Seils, his commander, and a dozen other marine officers with the First Reconnaissance Battalion, all in their officer's uniforms. They almost looked like the navy officers around them, seated at their positions on the bridge. Though the marines were still, silent at attention, the officers around them seemed to be very busy, tapping away at their terminals, communicating, receiving and directing orders. Callagher had no idea idling in space could be such a complicated endeavor. 

Before the collection of officers, next to a command holoprojector a meter tall and two meters in diameter, stood a clean shaven, hardened looking man in his mid-forties. This was Colonel Ferrangh, callsign Obelisk, First Recon’s commander. His face was unreadable. Not blank, but hard and impassive. He appraised the room.

“Are we all in attendance?”

“Yes, sir,” one of the recon officers answered. 

“Good,” Ferrangh said, and he pressed a button on the holoprojector’s terminal. A large holomap projection of a piece of forested, coastal terrain sprang into view. “Gentlemen, this is New Plympto’s Kourshad Region,” Colonel Ferrangh said, pointing at the map. “The provincial capital, Phereis,” he said, using a gesture to highlight an inland city, “is the nerve center of the Free Nosauria Liberation Front. From this location, rogue elements of the planetary government are able to provide air support, establish supply lines, and give refuge to the enemy. As has been made clear to us, gentlemen, General Vennader’s orders are that the enemy shall have no refuge.”

With a short series of waves and gestures, Ferrangh zoomed out from the city and to the larger region. Bright red and green lines and icons appeared on the screen, the lines of battle and unit positions. “Phereis is the General’s objective. Fourteen standard days ago, the Second Marine Regiment, attached to the New Plympto Army, moved out from Camp Darropolis and marched on the city. You are currently looking at the projected lines of battle. This is not, however, our current situation.”

Another gesture, and the lines moved. The green fell away from Phereis. The red units pushed forward in tandem, and many of them vanished from the map. There was far more green than red on the map now, and the line was a messy, serpentine thing limited in its coverage to the northwestern sector of the grid. If Callagher had to make a guess, he’d guess this was bad news. 

“Heavy enemy contact has placed us behind schedule, and local allies have failed to provide us with intelligence up to our standards. The General understands that no plan survives enemy contact. The General is adaptable and tolerates changes in circumstance. However, the General also understands that the violence of action will carry the day on New Plympto. The NPA and Second Marines have permitted the enemy to seize control over the tempo of this fight. That, General Vennader cannot tolerate.

“As a result, Obelisk and the First Recon Battalion are putting boots on the ground. It falls to us to recapture the tempo in Kourshad. To this end, command has seen fit to attach a special operations unit to our battalion. The First Recon will be conducting joint operations with Captain Seils and his MARSPEC operators. Those operations will be carried out here.”

The map zoomed in and shifted focus to the southwestern sector. On the first, projected status map, this area had been behind allied lines. Now, it was well before them, and dark. No red or green units to be seen there, just a few population centers Callagher estimated to be small towns or similar. 

“The southern flank of the NPA-Hosnian joint task force is dark, and four thousand enemy combatants command anticipated encountering on the battlefield in the north are currently unaccounted for. This concerns General Vennader. He wants eyes on these units yesterday.”

“Jungle density in this area is too high for remote reconnaissance, but thanks to the efforts of our MARSPEC team, we understand that certain cargo shipments aboard freighters suspected of carrying shipments to the enemy have been unloaded and transported to these locations.” Red dots appeared on the map now, marking four of the towns and a few locations deep in the New Plympto jungle. “These are Nosaurian hamlets and villages, and the objective of First Recon’s mission. Officers, your companies will be deployed here, in the west, by Axehead drop,” he said, and three yellow icons appeared on the screen. “You will move east and hit each of these villages. Your mission is the acquisition of actionable intelligence on the enemy’s position and disposition at these points and the surrounding area, and to act on it.” The holomap outlined prospective routes for the new yellow units, and then additional icons appeared farther south, off the coast.

“Captain Seils,” Ferrangh said, now addressing the MARSPEC commander, “you and your operators will be dropped here, off the southern coast under the cover of darkness. Your MARSPEC team will move up the coastline and into the Kourshad Delta before disembarking at the riverbank here.” Callagher watched as lines traced a route up the coast and inland via a large river. Just to the north of the projected disembark, three red dots gleamed deep in the jungle. "You and your team are to ascertain the nature of these positions and, if possible, destroy the enemy’s advantage there. To accomplish your missions,” he said, now addressing both the MARSPEC and recon officers, “you will have the orbital strike capabilities of the [i]Paragon [/i]and the [i]Optio[/i], as well as close air support in the form of low-altitude gunships and fighter craft.”

Easy enough. “Any questions?” Ferrangh asked.

“Sir,” one of the recon officers began, “do you have any additional guidance on the rules of engagement for this operation?” Ferrangh nodded. 

“The New Plympto government believes that the civilian casualty count is too high. They have insisted that we make every effort to ensure that we engage only the enemy. Command has incorporated this directive into the ROE. Accordingly, we are only cleared to engage after reasonable efforts have been made to determine whether a target is hostile.” There was a pregnant pause. Ferrangh’s eyes shifted to the MARSPEC officers’ and then back. “That said, if you were to ask Obelisk how many dead civilians he would trade for any one of your lives, there is no number high enough. Our enemy does not wear uniforms, they do not play by the rules. You are to protect yourself and your units with the aggression expected of Hosnian Marines. It goes without saying that I have full faith and confidence in your judgment.”

He looked around, expectantly, but there was silence. “Thank you, gentlemen. Prepare your units to move out. Dismissed.”

[center]- - -[/center]

[right][h3]Blackbark – Phereis National Starport, New Plympto[/h3][/right][hr]
“That right there, Clunker,” Blackbark said to his pilot droid, “that’s what we in the biz call a problem.”

The Nosaurian and his faithful droid companion stood atop the [i]Hotspur[/i], looking down at a flat, black, cylindrical disc about a half meter across. Blackbark knelt down to inspect the thing.  Entirely unmarked, no blinking lights and such. Almost entirely unsuspicious, except it was definitely not there when they left port out of Graland Station. No, someone had stuck this on the [i]Hotspur [/i]sometime between leaving the station and landing on New Plympto. Someone on the ground, then, he imagined, but who? Or someone in the air. Someone without a face. “Fuckin’ Hosnians,” Blackbark growled, remembering the search. “Clunker, what do those databanks in your head tell you about the Hosnians we ran into? How long did they hold us up?”

“My memory banks inform me that the Hosnian Prime marines were aboard our ship for precisely twenty-three standard minutes and forty-seven seconds,” Clunker advised him. It had been shorter than a usual customs check, in Blackbark’s experience. He’d chalked it up to laziness, but maybe that had just been the cover. Twenty minutes is long enough to attach a tracking device to a ship.

“Shit. Clunker, get this thing off my ship, bring it down to the hold and disassemble the thing.” It might not be marked on the outside, but inside there might be serial numbers, identifiers, something to give him a clue. 

“Right away, captain,” Clunker said, and primed the blowtorch contained in his left forearm. Blackbark swung down the ladder on the side of the ship and climbed down, cursing all the way. 

He brushed past a few dockworkers and strode up the boarding ramp and into the [i]Hotspur[/i].  Once in the cockpit he threw himself into the chair and pulled up the HoloNet on the terminal. He slapped the side of it as the connection booted up, hoping to hurry it along with some percussive encouragement. With the HoloNet up, he moved to a secure channel, the cheekily named Free Corellia Express. FCE was a new, grassroots smuggling network based out of Graland Station that served as a major logistics avenue for the Free Corellia and related movements. Their shipments were the lifeblood of Free Corellia, Free Nosauria, and others that had yet to spark the flames of revolution. The movements had plenty of money to spend on outfitting armies and supplying themselves in a bid for independence, and smugglers like Blackbark were happy to help.  

The network also served as a way for the smugglers to watch each other’s backs. When you get tagged with a tracker on an FCE route, sounding the alarm is a thing of common courtesy. 

“Attention all FCE captains,” he spoke aloud, “I think I've got a  Hosnian Prime Navy tracking device on my ship. Sweep your ships and standby for confirmation.” He gave it a once over listen and sent it. 

Down in the [i]Hotspur[/i]’s workshop soon after, Blackbark found Clunker taking a blowtorch to the thing. It took two hours to get it up. Clunker’s torch couldn’t cut through the alloy shell without going over 90% power, and it was slow going even then. That was enough for Blackbark – no crime lords in the Corellian Sector had this kind of hardened tech on hand – but he needed to be sure. Soon enough, though, he got what he was looking for. Inside, after pulling out the guts of the thing, he found an alphanumeric code etched into the casing. No blinking red lights, though. He guessed the holoflicks took some liberties with that kind of thing.

“What do you make of it, Clunk?” he asked. 

“I am afraid the identification of such technology is not strictly within my programming, but it would seem to me that this is a very high-quality piece of equipment,” the droid replied as he sifted through assorted wires and parts. 

“Let’s take this back up to the cockpit and run the number through a HoloNet search. Not something you’d find in the hands of civvies, though, eh?” Blackbark asked.

“I should think not, sir,” Clunker agreed. 

It was indeed not.

“’Sale is restricted to military and police organizations,’” Blackbark read aloud off the HoloNet’s description of the SG810 Guardian, a high-end tracking device with interstellar capability and pinpoint accuracy. It was produced by a Hosnian security company. “Shit,” the smuggler growled, cycling through the product list. Plenty of similar devices, some a lot smaller than this one. “Shit, Clunker, that seems like a problem, don’t it?”

Clunker, sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, nodded his vaguely humanoid head in affirmation. “Yes, captain, it certainly does.”

[center]- - -[/center]

[right][h3]Doriah – 1805 Hydian Street, Coruscant[/h3][/right][hr]
Doriah Castal was half way through her first glass of wine of the evening when she made the call. 

“Call Commodore Donnic, will you?” she asked aloud. The droid brain replied by putting the dial through the holocaster at the head of her living room. 

Moments later, Commodore Donnic flickered into existence, his countenance and body all blue in holographic light. 

“Commodore, thank you for taking my call,” Doriah said with a smile. 

“Always, Senator,” Donnic greeted her crisply. He stood at attention, as if before a commanding officer. She liked it. Maybe she should have gone into the navy. She wouldn’t have made a half-bad commanding officer, she thought. “What can I do for you?”

“The Galactic Senate has commissioned a diplomatic assignment to Aurea, a fact-finding mission bringing some of our best negotiators together with experts on the Free Corellia movement,” Doriah said. “I’m transmitting the details to you now. I think it may be appropriate if this mission were to encounter some, shall we say, ‘difficulties’ en route?”

“What are you getting at, ma’am?” Donnic asked. A man of limited imagination, Doriah deduced. 

“Our friends in the Free Corellia Navy have a small bevy of capital ships at their disposal thanks to our efforts, do they not?” Doriah asked. She fought the urge to slow her speech. 

“They do,” Donnic said. 

“And, therefore, they may also have the ability to disable a starship while it is in transit from one system to another, no?” she pressed on. 

“We may be able to arrange something. This seems like an aggressive step,” the commodore advised her, hesitance in his voice. [i]Hesitance[/i]. She almost scowled, but deftly avoided that impropriety by taking a timely draught of wine. Decisive action would carry Dorsis and the Corellian Sector to a brighter future. If Donnic proved he was not a man of action, she may have to lean on others in the future. “Are you sure this is the best course of action?” 

“Commodore, I have no love for so many of my fellow Senators, but I respect their talent for mitigating crises as they arise,” she said. “The diplomatic arm of a republic that has stood for thousands of years, on the back of diplomacy mind you, cannot be underestimated. No, we must amputate.”

“This would be an assassination.”

“I didn’t say kill them, necessarily,” Doriah wheedled, putting a sweet note in her voice. “Just disable the ship, if such a thing is possible. I have no expertise in this field, but so long as shots are fired and these Senators fear for their lives, so long as the Republic sees that Free Corellia is unwilling to come to the table, that will be victory enough for our purposes,” she said. 

“Yes, ma’am, I’ll forward this mission to one of our assets. It will be done.”

The holoprojection flickered out of existence.

“Dismissed,” she said with a smirk.

How many lives would she end with this, she wondered. Three Senators, their staffs, the crew of the [i]Hammerhead[/i]-class cruiser they traveled aboard. Hundreds of lives thrown into contention by a quick call across the galaxy and a tentative alliance with a growing rebellion. Of course, if all went according to plan, no one would die, but she figured when lasers started flying in the void and ship-to-ship combat was at hand, mistakes could be made and miscalculations could dust the crew of an entire starship. 

She wondered if there was a difference between killing a person and ordering an execution. Did they feel differently? Should they?