LetsFly
rocketrobie2II: A Little Wrong
“To do a great right, do a little wrong.”
- - -
Z. Zatticus Blackbark – The Hotspur, Orbiting New Plympto
Z. Zatticus Blackbark was no stranger to the law. He wasn’t fond of it, and didn’t elect to involve himself in it, but it had a habit of finding him. He was hardly surprised to find himself hailed while trying to fly to a planet embroiled into a rapidly escalating civil war. Only, this time around, he wasn’t being hailed by CorSec officials or Republic patrols. Rather, he was being hailed by a Foray-class blockade runner identifying itself as a Hosnian Prime Navy frigate. At any other time in his life, this would be utterly bizarre.
Those were the times though, and as expected or unexpected, an air of indignancy about the whole affair went a long way, as far as he could tell.
“What in the hell is the meaning of this?!” Blackbark roared, stomping down the corridor connecting the cockpit to the main gallery and airlock.
The Nosaurian rolled his shoulders back, fighting against his customary slouch and bringing himself up to his full four and a half feet of height before rounding the corner. He found his loyal droid companion, Clunker, standing next to what appeared to be a human male. Their uninvited guest, a Hosnian Prime marine if Blackbark knew his insignias, was armored head to toe in black and white plasteel and wearing a mask devoid of features, human or otherwise, save for a reflective black visor. The marine was in the process of inspecting a datapad. Behind him, more Hosnian marines were already milling about, rifles in hand as they set to scouring the ship.
Scuffing the floors with their jackboots too, no doubt.
“Greetings Master Blackbark,” Clunker said in his usual dry monotone, tridigit hands clasped at his waist, “I have produced to this law enforcement officer a copy of our ship’s manifest upon request in accordance with Republic law.”
“The hell you have,” Blackbark growled, hands on his hips. “Who do you Hosnians think you are?”
“You’re Blackbark, I take it?” the marine asked. He stood an entire foot and a half taller than Blackbark, and asked the question with what seemed to be a deeply rooted disinterest. “Z. Zatticus Blackbark, registered owner of the light freighter Hotspur?”
“She’s mid-sized,” Blackbark corrected sharply, “and yes I am.”
“What does the ‘Z’ stand for?”
“The what?”
“Your name? Z. Zatticus? What does the ‘Z’ stand for?”
“It stands for ‘zone of your business,’ that’s what it stands for!” The marine stared at him blankly. Maybe not blankly, it wasn’t entirely clear from the mask. “What, they don’t program you for humor over on Hosnian Prime?” Blackbark asked. “It’s stands for Zyberio, after my grandfather, but I don’t go by that. Sick joke, giving that name to a hatchling, but my mother had a worse sense of humor than even you, if you can believe it.”
“Right,” the marine said tonelessly. He turned to business instead. “Well, Zyberio,” he said, “pursuant to Hosnian Congressional Resolution 441-74, Subsection C, my men and I are conducting an authorized inspection of your ship and personal property.” The marine recited what must have been a standard introduction with a bureaucrat’s dispassion for the job. “If you are found to be in violation of local or federal law, we are authorized to place you under arrest and seize your vessel. If you’d be willing to answer a few questions, maybe we can speed up the process and get you back to work.”
“Always happy to help an officer of the law,” Zatticus answered with scathing contempt. “But don’t call me Zyberio.”
The marine, unfazed, nodded and gestured to the datapad with his free hand. “Based on this manifest, seems like you’re carrying mostly industrial equipment, building materials, some luxury goods. I’m also seeing about a ton of kolto and some high-end medical equipment. Could you tell me a little bit about how you came to be transporting that to New Plympto?”
“Yeah, if you haven’t heard, we’re flying about five hundred kilometers above an active warzone, which, to my knowledge, is a place where people tend to get shot,” Blackbark grouched. “Great profit margins for this stuff down there.”
“Uh huh.”
“So,” Blackbark continued, raising his hands, open palmed, “unless taking advantage of the basic economics of supply and demand is now against the law, I don’t think we have much to talk about here.”
“Uh huh,” the marine intoned again. He turned his attention to his wrist mounted holoprojector, and began typing away at the holopad, referencing the datapad from time to time. Recording the full scope of the manifest’s contents, it seemed, based on how long it dragged on.
“I’ve got some great filth up in the cockpit under the dash, if you want to write about that too,” Blackbark offered as the minutes dragged on. The marine ignored him. “What, your commanding officer doesn’t want to hear about my Clutchmates Gone Wild collection? Doesn’t do it for you guys?” Nothing.
They stood in silence, ignoring one another, another fifteen minutes before the marine looked to the left. One of his underlings sauntered up. The second marine nodded and turned to the airlock, exiting the Hotspur to return to the boarding craft upon which the party had arrived. The leader returned his faceless gaze to Blackbark, who felt great discomfort looking into the black visor. Like staring into the void. “Everything appears to be in order here,” the marine said, handing the datapad back to Clunker.
“You sure you don’t want to stay for caf?” Blackbark asked as the marine took up a post next to the exit. “No trouble at all, always happy to accommodate Hosnian Prime’s finest,” he continued as more marines filed past. After the last one had boarded the shuttle, the leader gave Blackbark a wave and followed suit. The airlock hissed shut behind him.
“Fuckos,” Blackbark growled, and then let out a long breath and whistled. The Hotspur was old as hell and ugly as sin, but she had a few tricks here and there. The smuggler compartments scattered all about the ships, near seamless with the floors, walls, and ceiling surfaces, were one of them, and an absolute dream too. Blackbark was very glad he’d made the investment.
That marine didn’t seem like the kind of man to take kindly to a smuggler vessel stocked to the gills with a hundred blasters and a veritable shitload of thermal detonators. Not to mention a fair bit of spice for the sake of morale. The Nosaurian captain was a firm believer in supporting the troops, if there were credits in it.
Hands in his pockets, Blackbark strode back to the cockpit. His Free Nosauria contacts were waiting planetside.
- - -
Towler – Organa Senatorial Starport, Hangar 88-A
Bar Carrigher, President of Hosnian Prime and Senator for the same, was due to land at Organa Senatorial Starport earlier in the morning than Fosten Towler liked.
Towler worked as the holomessages flowed, and they started late in the morning and continued late into the night. This early morning charade was entirely disruptive to his work-life balance, and he resented it. That said, as whip to the South Colonies Caucus, greeting the chairperson of the Caucus as she made a rare appearance on Coruscant was one of his more important responsibilities. Appearances were nine-tenths of politics, so they said. That last one-tenth was a real bear, in Towler’s experience, so he wasn’t sure how true that was, but there was a kernel of truth to it and that was enough.
Towler wasn’t the only one to make face. Two dozen of the most important Senators of the South Colonies Caucus had turned out to greet Carrigher. They checked datapads repeatedly as they waited, but with the reporters about Towler stood at attention and waited. A holoimage suggesting that he was too preoccupied to care about the chairperson’s arrival was not a look that agreed with his personal brand.
This was especially the case now that Senator Carrigher and he were at odds. After he’d brokered a deal between Duros and Hosnian Prime allowing the Hosnian Prime Navy to use the Duros system as a staging ground for their operations deeper in Corellian territory, he’d committed Loronar, in Carrigher’s eyes, to the just cause of securing the hyperlanes. Corellia lay at the intersection of the Corellian Trade Spine, on which Hosnian Prime lay, and the Corellian Run, on the route of which Loronar and Byblos were located. Carrigher’s plan called for Hosnian Prime to secure the local systems along the Spine, while Loronar and Byblos would secure the Run.
While Hosnian Prime had held up its end of the bargain, establishing strongholds in the Plympto and New Plympto systems, the civil war on New Plympto had dissuaded Loronar and Byblos’s planetary leadership from following through. Loronar and Byblos had set up patrols around Nubia, the most strategically valuable Corellian Sector world on the Run, but were refusing to advance into the Truuzdann and Tanthior systems.
This had resulted in a half-dozen increasingly hostile holoconferences between his office and Carrigher’s, and he did not relish the idea of dealing with her in person. Nevertheless, she was here. The datapads went away as the hum of a starship engine grew louder above the crowd.
An elegantly designed starship, a chrome and gold crescent, glided near soundlessly into Hangar 88 of Organa Senatorial Starport. Towler looked to Casmir Covost, Senator for Byblos, brows raised in an effort to convey surprise. Senator Covost returned the expression. Towler imagined they were sharing the same reaction. This was a beautiful luxury yacht produced, so they were told, by the new orbital staryards over Hosnian Prime. The landing gear unfurled from the smooth underbelly, and the ship alighted on the landing pad, daintily for an enormous piece of machinery. Its journey from Hosnian Prime concluded, the boarding ramp hissed, and began descending.
Towler stood twenty yards back, alongside the other senators of the South Colonies Caucus. They were joined by dozens of security officers, senatorial staffers, media representatives, lobbyists, and more. It was crowded, more so than would ordinarily be the case. The awaited upon President of and Senator for Hosnian Prime had, of course, commenced a naval invasion of the Corellian Sector’s outerlying worlds, and was advancing on the heart of the Sector itself. Or, alternatively, she had launched a well-coordinated, heavily armed and outfitted anti-piracy campaign in a desperate, last-ditch effort to secure the Republic’s hyperspace lanes in the Corellian Sector and prevent the civilized galaxy from collapsing in on itself.
It depended upon to whom you directed the question, but Towler figured it was somewhere in the middle.
President Bar Carrigher strode down the boarding ramp, flanked on either side by a Hosnian Prime marine garbed head to toe in white and black plasteel armor and carrying a milspec blaster rifle. President Carrigher herself wore a sleek dress, nearly translucent, shimmering as if wet, and sheer enough to give hinting impression of her nipples. The dress seemed to Towler’s eyes to shift between silver and gold in hue with each step she took. He wondered if she was on the cutting edge of Hosnian Prime’s fashion, or if she made it herself by picking an outfit out of the wardrobe on a given day. She stepped as she finished her descent, smiling for the reporters and the cameras.
Carrigher had been a model long before she’d been president, and still knew how to work the cameras.
“President Carrigher, who are you wearing?”
“Madame President, will you be attending MetroStar Gala tonight?”
“Senator, is your daughter Berez traveling with you?”
The questions pressed on, and Carrigher answered some here and there, smiling and flirting with the blue flashes that rendered her in holographic format for republication across ten thousand news channels. They treated her more like a holostar than a politician, Towler mused to himself, but wasn’t she just that? She was the son of one of the wealthiest titans of industry and trade in the southern half of the galaxy, and in addition to money she had draped herself in the trappings of power and celebrity as well. Towler had the connections with the Loronar Corporation, he was exceptional at his job, but he would never amount to half as much as Bar Carrigher, he imagined. Who could?
“End Hosnian imperialism!” shouted someone, and Towler perked up. That was out of step with the rest of the questions. Not a question at all, actually. Carrigher seemed to notice as well, and her expression was one of puzzlement, maybe. The speaker was a reptilian Nosaurian in the process of drawing something from a bag. A holocamera, Towler expected.
No, a blaster.
It was a small thing with blue markings, nothing special to look at. The Nosaurian drew it from the bag and trained it on the President of Hosnian Prime. Towler’s mouth was open, and he couldn’t close it. It seemed surreal, to be watching an assassination unfold in front of his very eyes. Holofilms had soundtracks, and cinematic angles to add dramatic effect. The real thing looked very ordinary, almost at odds with the magnitude of the act. Just a sentient holding a small device in a hand, pointing it at another person.
Maybe the crack of blaster fire would have made the scene, but the blaster didn’t fire. The Nosaurian jabbed it at her once, twice, and considered it. He’d pulled the trigger, Towler thought, but nothing had happened. If he were human, Towler wondered if the blood would have drained from his face. Then a blaster was actually fired, and the Nosaurian grasped at his chest, taking a knee. Another blaster shot, and another. The two Hosnian Prime marines, each with his rifle leveled and trained on the would-be killer, discharged their weapons time and time again, pouring flashing blood-orange bolts into the body of the Nosaurian long after he’d collapsed. They had not set their rifles to stun, that was for sure, judging by the smoking corpse they left behind.
There was screaming and crying, shouting like nothing Towler had heard before. President Carrigher was escorted away into Organa Senatorial Starport by her two guardians as more Hosnian Prime marines poured from the mouth of the presidential starliner. A female reporter sat on the ground next to the dead Nosaurian, mouth agape in a silent, shocked cry as she clutched at a blaster wound at her thigh. Another, a Rodian male, lay dead.
Towler became dimly aware of a tugging at his elbow and realized that Casmir had been trying to get his attention.
“Let’s go!” he shouted, pointing back to the interior of the hangar, back to the doors. Medical personnel were streaming into the hangar, and there was a frenzy of activity as security officers and droids and all manner of officials began directing and countermanding direction among themselves.
Chaos.
- - -
Doriah Castal – 1805 Hydian Street, Coruscant
“Two were left dead and three wounded earlier today,” Coruscant Holonews Network’s talking head, a boringly well-dressed human rendered in full color holoprojection at the head of Doriah Castal’s living room, droned on, “after an attempt on the life of Hosnian Prime President Bar Carrigher. The assassination attempt occurred at the Organa Senatorial Starport just as President Carrigher exited her starship. For more, we go to Jel Ontolla, who is there at the scene. Jel, what more do we know about this situation?”
The CHN anchor’s image slid to the side and was joined by another figure as a perky blonde reporter shimmered into existence to his left. “Well, Van, the situation is still developing,” this new holographic projection answered, “but Coruscant Security Service officials have released the shooter’s identity. The alleged assassin is Segg Jumproot, a Nosaurian native of New Plympto. We’re also being told that Jumproot was a self-described freedom fighter with the Free Nosauria Liberation Front.”
No mention of Hosnian Prime marines opening fire on a crowd of reporters with blasters set to kill, of course, or that the “shooter” had never fired a shot, but that was the news for you. Doriah slouched deeper into her plush couch, red wine sloshing in an oversized glass. Like it or not, though, this was the news, and as Senator of Dorsis she had a fiduciary duty to keep herself appraised of all news relating to the planet and the Corellian Sector. That was, of late, a great deal of news, but no one had ever said you needed to keep appraised while sober, and so it was bearable.
“But to be clear, the FNLF has not taken responsibility for the attack at this time.”
Ah, fair and balanced reporting.
“That’s correct, Van, but CSS officials have stated…” she continued, but she was suddenly silenced, her lips moving but producing no words to match. A moment later and the call followed. Aurabesh lettering replaced the CHN news team, projecting a name across the holoprojection field in big, blue lettering.
“Pick up,” she said aloud, and her apartment’s droid brain answered the encrypted holocall. A crisply dressed naval officer stood at attention in her living room, hands clasped behind his back. Or so she assumed. The holoprojector didn’t render the backsides of her callers. She’d checked.
“Commodore Donnic,” she said, hardly moving a muscle save to bring her wine to her lips, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Only good news, Senator,” he offered.
“Something I can drink to, I hope?”
“It seems you’ve already begun, Senator.”
“So I have. But a retrospective reason would be appreciated all the same,” Doriah said with a smile. The military types were so uptight. It was hard to have fun with them.
“I may well have something for you, then,” Donnic said with a brief, crisp and very thin smile. “The last of sixteen supply ships has landed on New Plympto and delivered its cargo." Doriah struggled to refrain from rolling her eyes. This was not her area of interest. "The Free Nosauria movement has received the full bulk of our first supply operation in the region. In addition to medical supplies, food, tools, and more mundane equipment, we’ve also managed to put military grade blaster technology in their hands, along with armor and construction materials for fortified defenses.”
“I thought we were having difficulty supplying the Nosaurians with armor,” Doriah said, eyes narrowed. Best to look shrewd, she figured, when you have little idea of what you’re talking about. Politics, the cultivation and expenditure of influence, that was her game. Military strategy was not.
“Armor in the sense of starfighters and vehicles, yes,” Donnic answered, speaking slowly. “We have been able to supply them with personal armor, however, produced by our more discreet manufactories to fit the Nosaurian form.”
“Well, let me know when we supply them with starfighters and I’ll open the wine,” Doriah said, taking a long draught of red.
“As you wish, Senator.”
“What about our Corellian friends?” Doriah asked. New Plympto bored her. The Nosaurians were a primitive people, bootstrapped into modernity by aid packages and galactic outreach, with a single, non-voting representative on Coruscant attached to the Corellian delegation. From personal experience, Doriah had few positive things to say about the sentient to boot. Their war was even more tedious. Inspired by the Corellian separatists and inflamed by the Hosnian fleet’s seizure and destruction of several Nosaurian space stations alleged to have been harboring pirates, a bitter civil war had broken out on the planet’s surface. Hosnian Prime’s anti-piracy operation had rapidly evolved into an intervention effort to bring peace to the world, or so Bar Carrigher said.
Doriah strongly suspected this was either a happy accident or Hosnian Prime’s plan all along. Policing the most strategically valuable sector in the galaxy because Corellia and the Republic couldn’t do it must be such a heavy weight on the Hosnians’ shoulders, she imagined. The treachery gave Doriah all the more reason to support Free Nosauria, though, and all the more reason to support the Corellian sector’s secession. And so she did her part to stoke the fires on New Plympto, though she had little to contribute on that front.
Free Corellia, on the other hand, was a boiling hot cauldron of partisan politics, paramilitary groups, activists, and some of the brightest thinkers in the galaxy. Establishing a stable diplomatic connection between the Free Corellia movement and sympathizers in the Senate was Doriah’s top priority, made difficult for the fact that the Dorsian navy was far more interested in communicating with Free Corellia’s motley array of starship commanders, a collection that ranged from pirates to ex-CorSec officers to former System Defense Force captains. They had far more enthusiasm for the cause than they did a love of organization, which made coordination challenging. As a deniable asset heavily linked to what was quickly shaping up to be a political, if not outright military, conflict between the Corellian Sector and Hosnian Prime was a valuable thing, so she understood their focus.
“We’ve arranged for some two dozen light capital ships scheduled for decommissioning to be diverted into the hands of captains we estimate to be potential strategic assets,” Donnic answered. “We’ve also arranged for some of our officers to work as consultants, setting up logistical networks and advising on naval strategy. Organizing the Free Corellia Navy has been challenging, but we’re making headway.”
“The Free Corellia Navy. So, they have a name, but no leader? Have we identified a suitable liaison? A point of contact?”
“Not yet, but we expect some sort of leadership structure to emerge in the coming months. As I said, there are a number of promising candidates on the board.”
Months was a long time, far longer than she liked. But all things in good time, she supposed. She finished the wine, and began pouring another glass, emptying the bottle. “Very well.”
“The Dorsian Navy has drawn the line at the Xyquine system,” informed her further. “We’ve directed our most reliable Free Corellia captains to the system. If the Hosnians try to muscle their way onto Xyquine II, we can arrange for an appropriate response.”
“Don’t make me the centerpiece of a civil war here, Commodore,” Doriah retorted sharply. “I just renovated my condo here, and I’m not interested in moving back to Dorsis.” Truth be told she missed her homeworld. Dorsis was a developing ecumenopolis, with roughly a third of the planet covered by urban sprawl, much like Coruscant. Unlike Coruscant, there was still a biosphere to speak of, and the urban sprawl was much cleaner.
It was also unlike Coruscant in the sense that it was not the capital of the Republic, and the Dorsian Navy was a system defense force by another name, with no more rights and privileges than any other. Except for the Hosnian Prime Navy, apparently. If you’re Bar Carrigher you can do as you please, it seemed.
In any event, waging war on other Republic worlds was certainly beyond the scope of their powers, to say the least. Whoever shot first would lose.
“We’re under strict orders not to fire on Hosnian forces unless fired upon, Senator,” Donnic answered easily, but she wasn’t sure she trusted him. The Hosnian incursion into the Corellian Sector under the guise of securing the Republic’s hyperspace routes was, to put it mildly, greatly unappreciated by Corellia and her sectormates. Dorsis, as one of the centers of civilization in the Corellian Sector, was keen to support Corellian hegemony in the sector. ‘Hosnian imperialism,’ the would-be assassin had shouted at Bar Carrigher? A very apt description.
“I trust your judgment,” Doriah lied. “That’ll be all, Donnic. This bottle is empty, and I can’t continue without a drink in my hand. Keep me appraised of the situation?”
“Of course, Senator.” The commodore winked out of existence.
Doriah sipped at her last glass of wine. She was a traitor to the Republic, she knew. Or she was a product of circumstances. The Republic was a husk of what it had once been, propped up by the economic and industrial strength of the Corellian Sector and a half dozen other sectors like it. There was a bright future for Corellia and her sister worlds without the Republic, without the Senate, without the thousand parasite planets across the galaxy that fed on Corellia and Dorsis. She wondered if the Founding Fathers of the Republic felt as she did now, wondering whether history would remember them as heroes or villains when the curtains were drawn, and the show ended. She wondered what crimes of theirs the history texts had erased. Some like hers, maybe.
To do a great right, do a little wrong, she’d heard somewhere. She’d done her little wrong; she had no choice to see it through now to do that great right.
She drained the glass of wine, set an alarm, and laid down.
- - -
Aleks Callagher – The Interceptor, Orbiting New Plympto
Back aboard the Interceptor, First Lieutenant Aleks Callagher stood, still in his battle armor, at attention before his commanding officer. Jodo Adorne, captain of the Foray-class blockade runner and a man with a squat face that looked to have been beaten with a hammer, sat behind the desk in his quarter. He was looking down at a datapad in his hands and scrolling through, Callagher assumed, the report on the Hotspur.
“This all seems to be in good order, Lieutenant,” Adorne said, giving Callagher something that sounded like approval.
“Thank you, sir,” Callagher answered.
“I see the tracking devices are in place on the cargo and the ship?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. Specialist Calder performed a solo spacewalk to secure a tracker to the hull while we conducted our search. One way or another, he’ll lead us to the rebels.”
“Excellent,” Adorne said with a smile. “Dismissed.”
