The Rebel Faction

“A man's worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions”
~Marcus Aurelius

<i><b>Shortly after the battle of Coruscant...</b></i>


It is a dark hour for the Empire.


As the hours after the battle of Courscant grow greater the specter of defeat hangs low over the heads of the Empire's leaders. Soundly beaten and driven from the world once known as Imperial Center, the foundations of the once seemingly-invincible Empire has begun to crack as the weight of the Cree'ar, the Reavers, and fragmenting political ties to surrounding nations make themselves felt. Azrael Zell has been deposited from the position of Regent by an insurgency within the Empire but a new, if illegitimate, Emperor has been found to rally around in the newly reappeared Park Kraken. Throughout this the uppermost regions of the Empire, Yaga Minor and Bastion, remain far from the Empire's minds and have been left to forge on their own for the time being, with only Muunilist and it's financial markets in continued contact with Imperial Center.


The once proud Imperial fleet has now been bruised. Reserve fleets across the Empire mobilize as the Empire prepares itself for war, while the remaining fleets of the core hesitantly wait for orders after the fall of Coruscant. Kach Thorton's mighty Borderland armada, a large segment of the remaining Imperial Fleet, prepares itself either to begin an offensive to push the Reavers from the isolated but still unravaged industrial worlds within the Borderlands, or for war with the League of Nations if they attempt to move against the Empire.


Within in the once-unified Empire a dissident faction now grows, gaining influence and gathering resources and connections within the Imperial Hierarchy and boldened by it's success against Zell. Kach Thorton, granted the title of Supreme Moff and Grand Admiral by the new Emperor soon after the battle, continues his plotting against the Empire's “old guard” - the older members of the Empire he believes hold back it's progress and threaten it's very existence. At the same time, Telan Desaria makes his way back to the core from Onyx, changed by the years of bloody occupation and guerrilla warfare he's seen. Many simply rally behind the loudest voice, desperate for a leader to follow. Wes Vos begins a campaign against the Cree'ar, vowing to wipe the galaxy of the scourge and avenge the Empire's defeats at their hands.


Peace is far from the minds of Imperial citizens. As far from their minds as the idea of defeat...

<b><i>Post Coruscant</b></i>

Kach furrowed his brow at his former superior in thought, momentarily amused by the question of if he could see it. Holonet had become shaky lately, with the new relays on the Mid-Rim far less powerful than the old ones around Coruscant that had been destroyed. The ridiculous amount of encryption they were using due to the conversations sensitive nature didn’t help either.

“Talk about a move that takes <i>balls</i>,” Kach said. “Coruscant drops off the map for a few weeks and what happens? Park Kraken emerges from the dead and declares himself Emperor!”

“Sounds like an old-fashioned Holodrama if you ask me,” Gilford chimed in. The Sector Admiral was not amused at Thorton’s analysis of the situation and it showed in his voice. “The whole thing is ridiculous.”

“Maybe, but we’re living it. I’m going to Vladet now to meet with Emperor Kraken. Stick to your part of the plan. You know what to do.”

* * *

<i><b>Somewhere between Coruscant and Vladet…</b></i>

A cloud of Ion mines, courtesy of a nearby Imperial Armaments depot, slowly drifted across the twinkling stars outside of the <i>Smuggler’s Luck</i>. A squadron of Action IV transports drifted in the opposite direction, back to the lurking battleship and the cover of a nearby asteroid. Next to the luck sat a single interdictor cruiser, borrowed from an Alliance owned shipyard where it had been undergoing a refit. With luck, it would be back from its “shakedown” cruise in just a few days no worse for wear. It’s gravity wells now slowly throbbed in a powered down mode, ready to be brought up to full power in just a few moments as soon as their target entered the killing field.

This operation, with the mines, was so ridiculously, impossibly crazy under normal circumstances it had almost no chances of working. But the payoff, if the supposed cargo was true, was so enormous the Alliance could not afford to pass it up and Kach had an easy time convincing Jesh Tolli that it could be done.The convoy, from the Imperial capital, was the most important single squadron of ships to have left during the evacuation – the vessels carrying the backup of the Imperial Palace’s databank. Always fully fueled and ready to go, with a constantly updating backup stored on board, several of these convoys were always on Coruscant. Now, with the evacuation, there unexpected mission had finally become necessary and they each made their way to Vladet. This one, however, wouldn’t quite make it…

…The one just leaving hyperspace now. Two dozen medium-sized transports and a skeleton escort (for data this important) of four Carrack Cruisers, two Victory-class Star Destroyers and two Imperial V-class Star Destroyers, all badly mauled from the battle above Imperial Center. The mines, surrounding the convoy, activated their thrusters and dove toward the unshielded flotilla with unbridled fury, the first ones detonating against transports just moments after the convoy entered the surrounding space and rendering the first transports helpless. The warships, better armored than the transports, were shieldless and caught off-guard but no pushovers and began to bring weapons online even as systems and generators failed due to the ionic attack.

The small battlegroup, the best the Empire could scrounge up for this convoy after the mauling at Coruscant, wasn’t enough to defeat the Smuggler flotilla – six Victories and two Imperials remained cloaked and surrounded the convoy. But, if the enemy commander played his cards right it was enough to still stop the Smugglers from achieving their objectives. Even if the Empire couldn’t win, he could still – rather easily – destroy the convoy with one of the Star Destroyers while the other ships held them off.

But would he?

Actually, <i>she</i>.

The central holopad on the bridge lit up as the enemy flagship requested a communications line and they were patched through. In the centered appeared a slender female figure for shorter than the average for a human, but something about her was menacing.

Her message, politely summarized as wanting to know what he was doing here and informing him he was about to die, was tersely worded and harshly delivered. This was not a woman he would normally want to tangle with. His response – designed to be provocative as possible – and politely summarized was that he was a representative of the Rebel Alliance here to board the convoy and seize any weapons and material carried in the name of the Rebellion, and that Imperials were rather dumb – in fact comparable to Mynocks. To emphasize they were here for a fight the Smuggler’s Luck unleashed a volley of turbolaser fire across the void to the Imperial Escorts which dissipated harmlessly before reaching them due to the long range and a squadron of X-wings began emerging from the ship’s hangar.

<i>Take the bait, Take the bait, Take the bait!</i>

She did, if not quite.

Battered by the ionic mines, the Imperials knew that one half-disabled Imperial Star Destroyer was probably not going to fare very well against a Victory. It might win, certainly, but it might be permanently crippled in the process. The Captain – whatever her name was – decided to move both of her Star Destroyers forward toward his ship, with the two Victories fanning out on the Convoys flank to provide security and the two Carracks holding point in front of it. That was about as good a compromise as he was going to get. He waited until the Imperials were about halfway to his ship, the Star Destroyers being continually pounded by Ion mines all the way (though by now they’d deployed TIE fighters and were successfully intercepting them about half the time, with the Star Destroyers anti-missile systems getting most of the rest) before ordering the Anti-Interdiction field on the Interdictor to activate – the signal for the rest of the ships. As they watched the interdiction field appear on their sensors they decloaked, guns charged and shields up, and began moving. The two Imperial Star Destroyers moved up between the Empire’s two Star Destroyers while the remaining Victories engaged the four ships surrounding the fleet, pelting the Victories with waves of missiles targeted at their anti-missile defenses at the same time more mines came pouring in, resulting in both some missiles and mines making it through. Turning to engage the attackers, the Victories drew their guns away from the convoy, letting Jesh breathe a sigh of relief.

“Captain,” he said after pondering the situation for a few moments. “Broadcast a request for surrender. Emphasize that crews will not be harmed if they surrender now and that they <i>will</i> die here today if they do not and their sacrifice will have been in vain. Tell them the Empire needs crews like them now more than ever.”

He began to walk away but caught himself. “Oh,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “Set up a rendezvous with Thorton. Tell him we have what he needs.”

* * *




<i><b>18 Months Ago

<color=yellow>Project Homoculus </color>

From “Kach Thorton: The Past Eighteen Months”

Mechis III</i></b>

<color=yellow>Trachta sat quietly in his garden office at the top of the Tower, Mechis III's administrative building that Trachta had taken years ago as his private citadel away from the busy activity of the Empire's Core. The planet itself, a major manufacturing center for the droids utilized by the Empire was also a major equipment supplying world for the ISB. Even with only a month worth of work Trachta was using his private little fiefdom, the Mechis Cluster, to begin a quiet and gradual build up of COMPNOR operatives. No one really cared to pay much attention to the Empire's internal security mechanism, too focused on issues from outside the Empire to really care what the cybernetic Director of COMPNOR was doing. His plans to aid Thorton would take a bit more time and planning, spreading out the necessary agents even as he had already begun to quietly slip agents into the Imperial Holonet network. He was digging his claws slowly and gradually into the Imperial infrastructure, focusing on the major logistical areas of the Empire.


"Sir, the prototype is ready for you to view," chimed the voice from his desk com of one of his droid specialists.


Trachta nodded and walked across the well kept garden he spent his time within while on Mechis III most of the time to the turbolift. He slotted one of his specially encrypted code cylinders into a socket and the turbolift quickly went down until it passed the floors of the vast administrative tower into the crust of Mechis III. Deep below and built only after Trachta had taken the planet over was a secret research facility for development of new droids for use by the Empire. One such model was the droid prototype he was now going below the surface to be seen. The journey took about fifteen minutes considering how deeply hidden the facility was under the surface before the doors slid open.


"Welcome to lab, Director," said a smiling Arkanian scientist.


"Doctor Ertho, I assume the prototype is ready?" Trachta asked in very business-like tones, never really carrying for the often strangely cheerful Arkanian scientist.


"But of course, please follow me," Dr. Ertho said as he began leading Trachta further into the scientific bunker past an array of droid prototypes including a rather familiar looking ball like the one Trachta kept in his office on Coruscant.


Ertho engaged Trachta in his usual inane conversations which the cyborg responded to with terse and basic answers, not really willing to ever tell the scientist much of anything. He had no issue with what Ertho was as much as his annoying personality which seemed to be in full swing today. It wasn't until they entered Ertho's office and Trachta found himself looking at a second Ertho that he stopped in place, looking between the two of them.


"Magnificent, isn't?" The other Ertho asked eagerly as he walked over to stand by his copy.


"Then again which of us is the copy?" The one that had greeted Trachta now asked.


Trachta looked between them, taken aback slightly as he tried to scan them with his internal cybernetics and he still couldn't discern which one was artificial. He wouldn't like this situation one bit if he wasn't the one funding the project for a new model of a Human Replica Droid.


"So which of you is the droid?" Trachta asked with curiosity as he walked around the pair who were now smiling smugly.


"The correct term is Advanced Human Replica Droid, Director." The second one answered.


"And as to the copy, I'll turn it off," The first said and pulled out a control and clicking a button.


Trachta was shocked as that one then suddenly froze, its eyes staring blankly ahead as the second Ertho grinned widely now.


"I imagine you weren't expecting that, were you?" Ertho asked eagerly.


"I was not, and I would be annoyed if you had not managed to make such a perfect copy. It even registers as being alive," Trachta said as he walked around the now deactived Replica Droid.


"Admittedly I had to program it with my brain algorithms for it to act exactly like me, but it will pass for an organic no matter how hard they look as long as now one cuts it open and digs too deeply," Ertho said with amusement as he watched the cyborg examine his prototype.


"How many of these can you make if provided a full production facility and resources," Trachta asked calmly and looked at Ertho.


"You mean you want to actually put this project into large scale production?" Ertho asked in astonishment yet his eye gleaming with eagerness to take on such a challenge.


"Yes, so how many?" Trachta demanded more sharply.


"Well, initinally only maybe 50 or so a month. Once I get down the correct production technique I imainge I could make 100 a month without too much fuss as long as I have the bio materials and electronics needed for work this complex."


"Then make preparations, we're expanding this facility with a full scale HRD production plant," Trachta said as he turned and left a stunned Ertho gaping as his back.


Project Homoculus had begun. </color>

~

<i><b>Shortly after Jesh Tolli’s Raid</b></i>

And now, more than a year later, it had long borne fruit. Millions of HRDs, manufactured in a vast facility at the center of Mechis III, now served within the Imperial Fleet, Bureaucracy and Army thanks to COMPNOR’s infiltration efforts – replacing dissidents or merely the unlucky with a perfectly identical copy, uploaded with even a subjects cognitive imprint to let it meld perfectly into its unlucky original’s former life. Even the SS was not immune to COMPNOR’s efforts.

But all of this was nothing compared to what was now about to unfold.

Thanks to Jesh Tolli, Doctor Ertho was about to create his greatest masterpiece.

~*~

<i><b>Shortly after Kach Thorton’s visit to Vladet </i></b>

Beneath the Super Star Destroyer <i>Nighthawk</i>, formerly the <i>Eternal</i>, Kach watched the fields and oceans of Muunilist rotate beneath the mighty battleship, a comforting presence in a region that had watched the destruction of Yaga Minor not long before. Further comforting were the two Borderland fleets, the 7th and the 9th, he had brought with him to the region to help stabilize things. With the fall of Courscant most of the refugee traffic had been directed toward the Mid-Rim, but a substantial portion of it had headed instead to the Yaga Minor Protectorate or the Bastion protectorate, the home of the former Imperial remnant and a veritable fortress fortified by years of preparation to resist the New Republic if it ever came knocking. Now, thanks to the refugees pirate activity in the protectorate had skyrocketed with an abundance of new targets and most warships staying close to important planets. In a few weeks, he suspected, these sectors would be cleared of pirates by the fleets and things would return to normal. In the meantime, he was here in an effort to reestablish contact with the region. Credit lines had frozen after the Coruscant attack and the region had been completely cut off from holonet communication with the rest of the Empire and the flow of capital had to begin again to avoid an economic collapse. To make matters worse, Moff Drayson disappeared after the attack on Yaga Minor and was presumed lost, leaving the protectorate leaderless.

“Melini,” he addressed his secretary. “Contact a Miss Darro at Arliss Industries. Tell her Kach Thorton is here to see Mr. Arliss.”

<i>They’re colossal</i>, Kach reflected, studying the Arliss Towers outside his shuttle’s viewport. Huge and black, they dominated the landscape like the massive Super Star Destroyer orbiting above the world.

A massive shadow cast by the leviathan passed over the shuttle as if to remind him of its presence. Looking out across the cityscape, Kach could see other, smaller, shadows dancing beneath him, cast by the Star Destroyers and smaller ships that accompanied him. An impressive enough display of power, brought along to restore order to a protectorate swamped with refugees and pirate activity in the aftermath of Coruscant. Moffs and Governors, paralyzed by the alien threat had pulled their defense forces back to protect key planets and away from patrols on the hyperlanes, leaving lawlessness and disorder the rule of the day beyond civilized systems. The fleets getting ready to leave Muunilist would be more than enough to re-stabilize the region in short order and to remind those Moffs and Governors they had certain obligations they needed to keep toward the Empire and her citizenry.


And remind them, if necessary, where their loyalties lie.


That scenario was unlikely, however. Trachta and the ISB, weary of Bhindi Drayson and the formerly Demosthenians had infested this protectorate with a web of agents, sleeper cells and secret police to keep the oversector in line. True agents of the Empire, of course, would be in charge. The only question was who, of course, since the protectorate’s government had disappeared with Bhindi Drayson and the shipyards of Yaga Minor. The business of rebuilding the protectorate, however, could wait until current business was completed.


The landing at the towers was uneventful thanks to the clear weather and gentle winds. Greeting him on the platform as he stepped out of his shuttle was a small delegation of envoys from Arliss who shuffled him into the tower promptly. A short turbolift ride later and he was stepping into the office of Seamus Arliss.


“Grand Moff Thorton, it truly is a pleasure to meet with you,” his host greeted him. “Please, make yourself comfortable. I feel that we have a great many things to discuss regarding the future of the Empire and how it pertains to our selective interests."


“Thank you, Mr. Arliss,” Kach replied, reaching out his hand to take the Chief Executives and looking him in the eye like his father had taught him so long ago, “Please call me Kach. Do you have a conference table anywhere we could use?”


Arliss nodded. “Of course, this way,” he replied, gesturing to his office door. Predictably, a well-equipped meeting space was next door to the man’s office, and on the way there Kach selected a few small morsels on a server droid’s tray – he wasn’t hungry, but refusing them would be impolite. Diplomatically he chose a spot mid-way down the table and organized his notes while his host sat down nearby. A second assistant to Arliss – this one a human – asked if he would like anything to drink, and he asked for a light wine from Garos IV that he had developed a taste for while on the planet. While waiting for drinks to arrive Kach and his host bantered about the obvious subject of the times – Coruscant and the Reavers – with Kach careful not to talk much about himself. He knew within the Imperial Hierarchy he was well regarded, but even so an unfair and exaggerated reputation that he loved to talk about himself had started to proceed him during the past few months. Most of the conversation was commentary on the events and potential countermoves. Eventually his instincts began to tell him it was time to move on and he let the topic fade before changing to business. It wasn't his true goal for this meeting, but it could lead into it easily enough.


“I came today to ask your advice. Enough commentary from me, what do you think of the state of the empire today?"