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The Sound of the Wind in the Night

What a disappointment that had been. The Empire had followed the Rebel co-ordinates and found a prison camp... abandoned. No prisoners, no defences, just the platform's autocannons. Not even a fighter.

It was looking more and more like the information from the terminal at the prison camp was planted there, to mislead the Empire about the true whereabouts of the prisoners.

The platform had yielded no further clues about how to proceed. So the Nemesis had reached the end of this line of inquiry. Since the Imperial fleet had been led astray, it stood to reason that there was a target nearby that the Rebels wanted left alone, or undefended.

"Lieutenant, get me a map of all systems in the immediate area." Wedge spoke and Branet complied. A 3-D map of the local systems was shown in the briefing room area.

Commander MAR entered the room and nearly sat in his old chair, but moved up to the seat beside Wedge. As the newly promoted first officer of the Nemesis, he got a better position during the briefings.

"Glad you could join us, Mr. MAR. What kept you?" Wedge was semi-serious.

"Moving all my stuff, sir. It's not easy to carry all those awards all that way." MAR smiled.

"So noted. Let's continue, shall we... Okay, now tag the map with known affiliations of the planets."

Some planets turned blue to represent Imperial, others turned red to represent Rebel, and a couple did not change colour - neutral or unknown.

"We've had no reports of Imperial Installations being under attack. Whether that's really true or one has been knocked off without our knowledge, we don't know... and there is no easy way to find out." Wedge kept talking as the map updated.

MAR interrupted a bit. "Can you put up the locations of Imperial Installations on there?" They appeared on as little blue shapes.

Wedge took over. "Okay, now give me a list of these installations and rate their ability to fight back against an invader on a relative scale." A moment or two passed, and then the information was beamed to his datapad. He paused a moment to review it.

"Okay, let's suppose that they didn't go for an Imperial Installation. What are their likely escape vectors from the system? Yes, draw them on the map." He cut off the pending question.

Wedge continued. "Okay, so it looks like they would have either fallen heavily back into Rebel space, or headed out by Gamorr. Thanks for this. You'll see what happens in a bit after I check in with Admiral Fel and also find out what La Forge is up to."

It had been far too long since the Army had hunted down any more pieces of the holocron. General Jansen contemplated it in the evening, as he examined the pieces of the broken holocron in his quarters. It hadn't helped that Vek'din had gone rogue on them, leaving them without much choice in who should handle the holocron.

Starlit had found somebody suitable for the task, but Jansen was wary of the whole thing again. So he had dispatched some officers to the forests of Myrkr to get their hands on one of the Ysalimiri. Their ability to block the Force would be very helpful this time around. Unfortunately, Myrkr was a Rebel-controlled world... The Imperial troops would need to be very, very careful about how they got their hands on one.

The Rebels had also imposed a ban on their purchase and transport offworld, so the Empire could not even use one of their smuggler or third-party contacts to buy one. So the Imperial troops would have to, unfortunately, steal one.

Even now, as Jansen prepared to sleep for the night, the strike team would be on approach to the planet. He hoped that it would go well for them.

"Rockets loaded, Lieutenant." The weapons officer saluted Lieutenant Alex.

"Very good, crewman. Thank you. That's all for today."

"Thanks, sir." The crewman turned and headed off and out of the hangar.

Alex turned to his pilots. "Okay, we've got our rockets up. Does everyone know the plan?" A few "yes, sir" replies came back.

"An informant died to get us the whereabouts of this ship," Muscat had said in the briefing. "So we had better take advantage of it. They're awaiting some fresh troops, since most of theirs are tied up on Muunilinst or Geonosis or somewhere, holding the world under Rebel control. And obviously they've got plans of more."

But, according to La Forge, they weren't going to risk the Chimaera directly on this. The idea was to send in the fighters. If things got too hot, scramble them and bail out. With two dozen small targets, the Rebels wouldn't be able to pursue. But if there was a capital ship, they would have a vector to follow. And ISDs aren't all that fast...

La Forge had actually seemed to practice some caution since the near-destruction of the Chimaera. Maybe it was the nightmares he was having about it every now and then. But who wouldn't have nightmares about their ship, smashed, burned, and scarred, just barely hanging together by the thinnest of durasteel braces?

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