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Telan Desaria
Oct 10th, 2008, 02:11:12 PM
It was said once that chaos breeds order. To many, this very idea was anathema to a lifetime spent fighting for one ideology or another. The thought that one could not survive without the was was repugnant. Vehemency let such strength to the outcry that many refused to believe it, blinded by their own dedication.


The reality however, was not bound by fanaticism. The facts spelled themselves out in unmistakable - and unpallatable - clarity. Chaos survived amid raging fears that the pursuit of order would be taken to the extreme and all freedom would be lost, giving rise to the belief that no rule was better than bad rule. Then, however, a few would be wronged by this system of anarchy, and they band together and defy the lunacy of no government. They would fight and expand, by force more than diplomacy, to calm the night and allow all to sleep in peace. Fear of chaos would drive these men mad and their motives would be its total annihilation. But, as with all things, the mission would eventually be accomplished. Chaos would then be seen in the shadows, even when it was not there. And the people would rebel and throw off the yoke of their masters and call for less and less government until....


...the cycle would complete itself. Such a horrifying pattern had repeated itself time and again in the history of galactic events; so much blood had been spilled, so many billions fallen. Could it be stopped?


Perhaps.


Should it be stopped? Ah - that was the question, indeed. Should called into question belief, and by default the fanatical leanings of the only men whose answer mattered.


So, sitting on his perch and lording over two hundred thousand men trapped in the armored walls of a titannic command ship, and so many more thousands in the other, smaller walls of the ships nearby, one man answered as a spokesman for the rest: Never.


So it was...and so would it be. The cycle would continue. Anarchy had fallen to the forces of Order and now....Order would assert itself against those final bastions of chaos.


With a flash of pseudo-motion, the Imperial Fleet did puncture the vile isolation of Hutt Space. Pestilential filth abounded from starbase to starship to the ferrocrete caverns of delapidated cities below. Grand Admiral Desaria had brought the Empire's Will to Nar Shadda. Order would be ushered in with the stomp of the jackboot and the point of the bayonet. There would be but two options for those that looked on...


Order....


....or death.

Telan Desaria
Oct 19th, 2008, 10:52:09 PM
Orbit of Nal Hutta

Seven hours later...


" Bring us alongside, Mr. Torik."


" Aye, Captain."


The bridge was a cramped space, and that put it mildly. Duty stations for three officers and eight crewmen were crammed into an area barely the size of a lieutenant's quarters on a Star Destroyer. There was scant room to move from one station to another, each man ringed by terminals and screens, only the captain himself having an unobstructed post at the center of it all, facing forward out a set of viewports that ran up and away from the bow. Lieutenant Aist looked forward and wondered if the confined spaces had anything to do with the brevity of speech.


Perhaps...then again, life on a Customs Frigate is interminable periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.


Now was one of those minutes. The Empire had deployed thirty vessels of the Imperial Customs Bureau to Nal Hutta, the Adder among them. The journey had been long and tiring, locked inside one of the massive Fleet transports that sported them the great distance and brought extra fuel in what space remained; now they had a duty to perform.


" She'll run."


" No, she won't."


Aist looked back and forth between the helmsman and navigator - not one 'routine' stop had ever been conducted in the captain's six-month tour without a wager between them. So far, the navigator had been right most of the time. " Put me down for run," Aist quipped, then returned to the business at hand. " Ready grapples. Lieutenant Monner's detail prepped?"


Another crewmember, stationed aft of the tiny captain's seat, acknowledged. A squad of the Fleet Assault Corps stood ready at the airlock to board, by force if necessary.


" Grap-"


An alarm interrupted Aist before he could order the deployment of the steelen cables that would attach the small cargo ship to the Imperial vessel. Aist did not need it announced - four stops since arriving in Hutt Space had all ended the same way: the target ship was running.


" Pursue?" asked the helmsman, craning his neck around.


" Nope. Pick another one. The cruisers will get him."


" Moving off, re-securing grapples. We've got a nice Ore hauler, point 17..."


Sure enough, while the small Customs craft turned towards another victim to search, the plucky little cargo ship gunned engines that were barely a memory of what was factory-installed. It listed left, then right, but picked up speed all the same and tried to yaw out and away from the mass of Imperial warships that had come, unwanted, into the system. It was not quick enough. The guns of the heavy cruiser Hipper belched a few shots of neon turbolaser fire that went wide at first then slammed into the unprotected hull with a horrifying force. Hull plating was vaporized before fire consumed what atmosphere remained inside; then the fire consumed the entire ship.



* * *


To Marshal Alexei Prem, Chief of the Imperial General Staff

The work goes quickly here. I arrived index 65:07:001, local time. Encountered no organized resistance. However, ships in system have proven unwilling to be search and have been destroyed. Presence of the Interdictor has trapped a great deal of contraband here but most will be lost instead of captured. Either way, it is of no more threat to us. No Rebel presence observed. Troops will be landed shortly, after a sufficient area of the planet is cleared. I am going to contact the Hutts. They defaulted on our last arrangement and are paying the price. Perhaps now that the creditors have come to call, they will wish to strike a new bargain.

Grand Admiral-Baron Telan Desaria


" Poignant, sir. I'm sure the Chancellor will be pleased."


Colonel de Maziere was a good staff officer. Tall, thin, and with a keen mind, he was the pride of Carida's Staff Training Course - one of the few Fighter Corps officers ever to graduate. After reading the missive to be sent to Imperial Center, he snapped back to attention as he placed the pad under his arm.


" I'm sure he will. He wishes us to curtail the Hutts' operations and thus reduce crime, Empire-wide. Even though we do the work, he will benefit from any political capital that is to be had. Smart man, the Chancellor. Shrewd, but smart."


" Yes, sir." De Maziere dared not ask how the Grand Admiral planned to 'curtail' the Hutts. Their operations had, after all, survived for many centuries. Wonder as he might, he knew the Grand Admiral would reveal his plan in time. Sure enough...


" How to accomplish our task, though? Simple - when you cleave off a head of the Hydra, another grows in its place. So you strike the heart. The Hutts have been the center of a vast criminal empire for as long as time records. Simple - we kill the Hutts."