Cavalcade of Brass: Fortification of Porall - COMPLETE

[Telan Desaria]

“ Good morning, Admiral.”


A baton was raised to a black eyebrow as return to an officer’s salute, the owner of both baton and brow proceeding deeper into the expansive complex of Imperial High Command. Others stop what they are doing to rise before the Supreme Command of the Imperial Navy who is gracious and elegant in making sure that no genuflection is ignored or bypassed. His sleep the previous night was erratic and, as was all too usual, brief, but he shows no signs of it as he makes his way towards the conference he has been summoned to.


“ Good morning, Your Excellency. Did you sleep well - - all things considered?” asked Commander Linx, aide-de-camp to the Grand Admiral Telan Baron Desaria.


Desaria himself inwardly cringed when he looked out the windows of his office and the magnificent view they provided. Thyferra’s sun sat fully exposed over the Ionian Sea blazing orange streaks across the water until nature’s construction was halted by Man’s - Xucphra City rose from the water’s edge like some hastily awakened titan, her years rated higher than colony-administrative center barely past one hundred. Thatch huts and tiny ferrocrete bacta storage facilities had been plowed under to make way for malls, apartments, and towers rising high into the sky. Of that, the Grand Admiral could be proud for his time as Sector Fleet Commander had enabled him to aide in the city’s growth to holding four million beings.


“ I did, all things considered. Not enough of it, but what I had was refreshing enough. But the Empire needs it seems.”


“ Indeed sir,” replied the aide, handing the Grand Admiral a pair of cryshac sheets the latter began reading. " Marshal Prem summoned the General Staff into session and requested your attendance. The topic at hand is to be a system named Porall."


" Porall," Desaria repeated, only vaguely familiar with it. He knew that it lay on the vital hyperlane to Bespin, Hoth, Ison, and Hilari among others. Any additional information was beyond his immediate grasp. " I am ashamed to say it, but I am unsure if we hold it."


" If you forgive me impertience, sir, but I passed throyugh it once en route to Hilari during the last Vong invasion. Mostly desert sir, several cities that house some factories, nothing spectacular. The rivers, though, are something. The desert is dry but the rivers are kilometers wide with the cities growing aside them. That was interesting."


Desaria nodded as he placed his great coat atop a chair to be followed shortly by visor-cap then baton.

[Telan Desaria]

Marshal Prem was waiting just inside the conference room almost as if he wanted to act as some sort of buffer between the intricacies of General Staff work and the relentless life of field commander. He was so standing when Grand Admiral Desaria arrived, Field Marshal Fieri von Laang next to him completing a triumvirate of friends that had been apart for too long - sentiments the gentlemen exchanged upon locking hands once more.


" So, what did you need me - us" Desaria gestured to his comrade in arms, Marshal von Laang " -here for? I thought you generated orders we mangled until victory worked its way into the picture."


Von Laang smiled but allowed his features to sour after a scant moment of relaxation. " actually, I was involved this time."


" Et tu, Fieri?"


The trio laughed rather raucously for General Staff officers and a supreme commander though no one have dared speak a word. They proceeded deeper into the room, doors separated by standing guards closed in their wake. All natural light continued to assault the large etched doors though it would bt to no avail. The hall outside the conference room would be only space Thyferra's sun could conquer. Inside, light was born from ceiling-to-floor holomonitors lining an odd number of walls and those glow panels aligned along the meeting of floor and wall.


Grand Admiral Baron Telan Desaria took his seat at the head of the table, Marshal Prem across the length occupying the opposite head, and Field Marshal von Laang at Desaria’s right hand. Another dozen seats found themselves holding the remaining members of the Imperial General Staff.


“ I was told this is about Porall.”


Prem nodded. “ We have too much territory to defend with the deployable resources at our disposal. Though no hostility exists at present, we prefer to prepare.” The monitor to Prem’s right shook off the image it was displaying to show a three-dimensional representation of a planetary system. “ Only three satellites around Porall’s sun, but each of those three has at least four moons, thankfully all inhabitable though a few do have closed-air colonies. Porall is here, the outer-most world. She’s got about fifty million inhabitants divided between four cities in the northeastern continent. What the Staff has decided is to funnel any movement into the Empire through here.”


Desaria arched his eyebrow, skeptical. “ Just how do you plan to funnel this traffic, Marshal?”


“ That’s perhaps the most interesting part. May I introduce Major Tomann, Department of Military Research.” Prem snapped his fingers and a pair of aides moved into the darkness at the room’s rear to bring forward a diminuitive officer. The Admiral could see on his chest several meritorious service citations but none for bravery - quite common among IDMR officers. “ Major Tomann has perfected an old technology for hyper-mining.”


“ Hyper-mining?” Desaria asked, getting only self-pleased looks from the other officers assembled. Looking right, even the Field Marshal wore a cocksure grin on his blue Falleen face. “ Do tell.”


Marshal Prem removed the chains from Tomann’s proper demeanor who then moved to the monitor on the General Staff Chief’s left. “ The Barion mine was conceived some time ago as a standard defensive tool: later models incorporated a cloaking device, which made them very, very effective but also ridiculously expensive. The mines are still in use and great number, being produced in their 117th model-phase on Eriadu. What I have done is to remove the explosive and insert a reduced-scale, and by default efficacy, abolisher globe. These are constant running and due to the size constraints, are not self powered. Instead, each abolisher mine is tied to five standard barion mines each with half explosive and half power plant. The excess generated power moved along cable to the abolisher globe.”


“ Cable?”


“ Yes, sir.” Tomann switched slides to show a small cluster of mines, five tethered to one slightly larger bastardized relative. The central mine was hideously disfigured compared to the sleek, cylindrical form of its regular mine design, but was perfect in conceptual technique.


“ And it works?” Desaria asked, his interest genuinely piqued.


“ Without flaw.”


“ And what systems can we protect?”


“ To start? Varonat, Bespin, Hoth - everything along the Ison Trade Corridor. And that is just one area. The mine layers have already been dispatched. Refitting the mines takes a good deal of time, but can have the entire corridor secured in three weeks.”


Desaria glared at Prem and smiled. “ Magnificent.”

[Telan Desaria]

“ Between Sump and the Galactic Boundary lie one of the most fierce chains of gravimetric anomalies known to man. Any fleet, let alone ship, to successfully navigate it would take too long to effect repairs that our Corridor Sector Fleet would have trouble responding in time. Given the shape such ships would be in, they would be pounding womprats with concussion grenades.”


“ I don’t know, Fieri. I don’t like it. A long time ago I served under Khendon Sevon as my divisional commander and he is one resourceful, crafty little snarb. He won the thanks of the Diktat and the Legion de’ Honour by taking a small squadron around a pulsar to surprise a group of pirates with their backs to a sun. If there is a way through those anomalies, he’ll find it and make this entire minefield useless.”


Grand Admiral Desaria handed his good friend a decanter of brandy. The pair toasted and Desaria moved to a small humidor while the Falleen returned to staring out a thin, vertically elongated viewport. Falleen come with highly developed olfactory nerves, his nose picking up the soft scent of a hand rolled Taanab cigar. The commander of the Imperial Fighter had never been once to indulge but knew of his friend’s excess; he had once lost three month’s pay while at the Academy to attain a rare Corinthian.


“ Prem has great faith in the plan, and so do I.”


The Grand Admiral smiled. “ I cannot be such a pessimist forever. It will work. But now I am worried about Porall’s defenses. As it stands, it is not the best choice for a fortress world.”


“ That’s where I come in. Three days ago I sent four full wings of new Defenders under Lieutenant General Meyer there to begin the ‘beefing up’ process as Gabriel would put it.”


“ Anything food is Prem.” Desaria took a long drag of his cigar. “ Meyer. Is he Defendermeyer? Two hundred kills before being pried from a cockpit?”


“ Yes, but he swears the official count is inaccurate.” Von Laang had an excellent view from Desaria’s quarters in the superstructure of the Intimidator. He could see what looked like every ship the Empire gathered together in a swirling mass of ion-driven steel and durraplast. Never a pilot of or officer on a large battleship like his best friend, he always had to wonder how to ships bigger than shuttles more less than a kilometer apart managed not to collide. He would forever feel out of place in any vessel that could not corner on a deci-cred or barrel roll.


“ Isn’t it always.”


Von Laang heard the tell tale signs of a decanter being replaced on the table and turned to see Desaria moving towards him, smoldering cigar clenched gently between full lips while being held by two black leather-gloved fingers. He had known Desaria for nearly twenty years and had been one of the pall-bearers at his lover’s funeral – his mind was not difficult to read.


“ Your’re going to Porall, aren’t you?”


The Supreme Commander grinned. “ Of course.”

[Telan Desaria]

Orders had made their way from on high to the poor fools whose lives the brass shuffled about like so many pieces on a galactic chess set. Mines were to be deployed, which was quite a predictable command for the Serverus since she was a Minenschiffe, or mine ship. What was different about her orders was the sheer size of the deployment area, duration of mission, or compatriot vessels: every line layer had been assigned six tenders, each one filled to the brim with the individual pieces of the Serevus’ work.


At four hundred meters along the keel, she was not a slouch when ships of her type were concerned, though she was little compared with ships under construction to replace her. Barely in service a full year, she was already well past her prime, which made Lieutenant Commander Constantine XI, the ship’s captain, wonder. One assuring look at his orders did an excellent job of removing the questions he so badly wanted to ask from his mind. A field of mines stretching from Porall to Sump and from a point halfway between it and Belsavis would be no mean feat, but not unlike those the minelayers had handled before. A job was a job so the one and tenth son of Admiral Jakob Constantine resolved to do it.


If my ship doesn’t come apart at the seams first.

[Telan Desaria]

Porall


Generalmajor Maxell Lexington shook his head after shaking his fists had run its course. Those inept jockeys as he called them of the Imperial Navy had deployed yet another range-extended turboalser fifteen meters from where he had intended. While the final positioning would not diminish the weapon's efficacy and would in fact shorten its fire-recharge time, the faulty location would also make it harder for the tracked vehciles required on varying gravity planets to maneuver.


As commander of the Imperial Garrison of Porall, the orders for that world's fortification had landed in his lap. Actions such as laying wire and mines, placing artillery, digging earthworks, and forming up defensive units began the minute Lexignton arrived as senior officer. The scope, however, specified by the General Staff to which they intended to turn a desert-world with only five major cities all on one continent was mind boggling. Dutifully, Lexington had set to work - - - after, that is, making his lack of resources known to the powers that be.


" Damned Desaria! Maybe he should come here and muck around in the sand!"


Colonel Lord Archer Tarttar came ambling up, flamsiplast in hand as his commander was cursing the Empire's senior military leader. He handed the weekly control dispatch to Lexington.


" You're never going to believe this."

[Telan Desaria]

Generalmajor Lexington lit a short, white stick dangling from pouty lips attached to a dour face. His concern was for a small world at the periphery of an Empire, a world that had just found itself thrust from obscurity to center stage through the invention of some Lieutenant Commander on Carida. Despite his rank, he commanded the entirety of Porall’s garrison: nine Army divisions – four armored, six fighter squadrons, and one old, outdated defense station.


That last item hit the General particularly hard as he glared out the window of a Lambda III-class Shuttle ferrying him from the surface to a recently arrived heavy cruiser. There it hung in lazy orbit above the planet to which it would be tethered to its dying day. Lexington almost felt sorry for her: as an officer who had spent his first five years of service commanding a platoon on a Destroyer, he could understand the vehicular attachment many Naval and Fleet Corps personnel felt and Army soldiers scoffed.


“ Welcome to the Tsareavich, General.”


Lexington gave the ship’s captain a courteous salute and stepped from the shuttle’s landing ramp inside the spacious bay. A Storm Company of Personal Assault Walkers waited in formation nearby, all thirty one operators standing at rigid attention by their machines.


“ Thank you, Captain. This is the first Apraxin-class Cruiser I’ve ever been on.”


Captain Viscount Harrangue smiled. “ She’s third in a run of five, something of an experimental class. The heavier emplacements, though nor standard in configuration, give us excellent broadside capabilities. Rumor amongst us is that whoever designed her slept with some Moff’s daughter, only that saved his life was our success. But to business, General.”


“ Indeed. I received you communiqué about shore leave and wholly agree. The planet is yours to relax upon.”


Captain Harrangue stopped the General from departing so quickly. “ En route, shortly after I dispatched my message to you, I was told also to off-load a this detachment: 1st Company, 122nd PAW Battalion. I can assume they are to aid in your fortification efforts here, and Sith-knows just how good they are over open terrain.”


“ I can’t thank you enough, but between you and I, what I need are engineers.”


“ Oh?”


“ Yes. I can handle any invasion with what I’ve got. But if I don’t get some help building defenses, my armor will be as useless as sand on Yavin.”

[Telan Desaria]

Order of the Day 884762849

Unternehmen Totalize: Commenced

Priority Designation: Ultra

By order of the Imperial General Staff, systems herein named will be given the title Festung or Fortress. This entails simply that they will be fortified to the fullest extent possible as well as deployed with the most potent of defensive assets.

The purpose of such an order and the designation of said systems is to ensure the security of systems lying under the protection of a fortress as well as hold any attack long enough for sufficient counter-stroke elements to be sent to battle.

Porall: to be assigned XXVI and XXXIII Panzer Korps as reinforcements for surface combat areas. To be assigned 7th Response Squadron as compliment for spatial defenses. To be assigned Golan X Space Defense Platform Krieser within ten days of this dispatch.

Virmeude: to be assigned 14th Armee as reinforcement for surface combat. To be assigned 2nd and 3rd Response Squadrons as compliment fo spatial defenses.

Both above systems have been given priority in Unternehmen Schiffhalte and its subsequent allocation of re-designed barion mines. See General Order 7373434-99e for details.

signed
Marshal Alexi Prem
Chief of the Imperial General Staff

[Telan Desaria]

Colonel Archduke Tavington looked down at Fromm, his shuttle circling its landport before final descent. As an engineer, he was very impressed and were he not dead three hundred years, wanted to shake her designer's hand. The city rose almost out of nothing from the desert, a great and thick wall separating nature from man. Inside, spires and towers reached to the heavens like a thousand immortal pleas.

Most interesting of all was the city's centerpiece, a winding river nearly a kilometer in width at its quickest crossing. The cityspace sprawled on either side for what looked like and interminable distance, the walls grasping for each other over moving water when their halves came close.

The shuttle began a directly vertical descent when Tavington realized how close he was to both wall and water. Then he saw one of the city's premier defensive pieces: synthetic islands the length of the civilized plane housing large bore projectile artillery and massive missile batteries. Several of the hydro-interruptions housed shield generators, but their arrangement left much to be desired. And so, without ever having set foot on the planet of his new assignment, Archduke Tavington, Corps of Imperial Engineers, resolved himself to a task.

[Telan Desaria]

Major-General Lexington looked out over a dusty field, macrobinoculars clenched firmly between black gloved hands. Before him was a regiment of the Imperial Hussars: units composed of 'madmen inside AT-STs.' They were to be demonstrating to their new commander ability and discipline, showing off as it were that the reinforcements sent to Porall were better than the border garrison troops.


Lexington was not wholly impressed. One walker had fallen while marching - marching! of all things. Another had thrown a circuit coupling in the sand causing the twin laser cannon on the chin to fire. They effective reduced a sand dune to nothingness.


In retrospect, Lexington would have to grudingly acknowledge, while Porall was not as inhospitable weather-wise as Tatooine or Aridus, the sand still blew with the wind. Every vehicle sent down was immediately whisked away to field repair yards outside the city of Aduur to be buttoned up against the harshness of desert life. Filters had to be added and precious circuitry guarded by added metal plate or wire-mesh enclosure.


" They're good, but if you ask me, this group isn't Hussar-worthy."


Lexington looked back at Brigadier-General Monakma, commander of Porall's resident (desert) stormtrooper brigade. The otherman wore Army khaki instead of the 'stormie' black he was so accustomed to: like many of the new breed of officers in Imperial Service, he did not let pride get the better of good sense.


" Why's that?" Lexington asked, turning back to the display of walkers, one of its companies passing in close formation the garrison commander's reviewing trench.


" Well, I saw a demonstration once on Coruscant in the Plaza - long time ago, but I won't date myself." Monakma continued amid chuckles from his aide. " Regular units given them are competent enough, but the Hussars seem to live with their machines. They can walk'em along the edge of cliff in a downpour and hurricane and come out the other side in one piece. This lot just doesn't impress me."


" Me neither. Perhaps they were sent here to the desert to train. It is a new formation, we have to give them that."


" If you insist, sir."


Lexington smiled, and continued his review.

[Telan Desaria]

Hoire was the largest of Porall’s cities. It was laid out along the river at the north-east corner of what was called the box – three cities located at right angles west then south along the Great River and a fourth directly south of Hoire on the reserve side of the Tocom Mountains. As the largest of them, she sprawled on for five kilometers on either side of the river, twelve million people crammed into apartment towers and spired homes. Very few buildings ran below a dozen levels, those that did nothing more than storage areas and mechanic sheds. It was quite a sight to see.


Archduke Tavington felt a glimmer of pride as his new ship sped along the river above and below great spans from one shore to the other. Sending a look to either side of the Lambda II, he could see civilians bathing in the afternoon sun on ‘purified’ sand, many more taking relaxing swims in the Great River itself. The shuttle was moving too fast for the engineer to focus on one particular object as small as a person but could see the large city structures against which the throngs were silhouetted.


The sightseeing was soon over, the shuttle climbing to give Tavington a better view of the city he had been newly entrusted with improving. Fromm was no challenge, every necessity in redesign a task a subordinate could handle. Hoire, on the other hand, was not so much a challenge as a pleasure. The city was laid out like the other city’s locations: in a square. On each corner sat a massive pyramidal fortress twice as high as the city walls and half as high as some of the city’s tallest towers. From the flat-topped behemoths sprouted weapons of every kind from short range aerial defense missiles to long range turbolaser artillery.


“ All right, Markus,” Tavington said to the man whom had been assigned to him as a pilot and personal valet. “ Take us down. Let’s make ourselves at home.”


The Bespin-native nodded and smiled below his pilot’s blast helmet. The shuttle steered towards Fortress Alpha.

[Telan Desaria]

“ We’re coming out of light speed now, Admiral.”


“ Thank you, Captain. Ready a shuttle for departure: Marshal von Laang and I will head to the Marataduur shortly.”


Fieri von Laang, blue-skinned Falleen commander of the Imperial Fighter Corps, turned to look quizzically at his friend and superior. “ The what?”


Desaria smiled. “ While we were aimlessly wandering through space, I put some orders into effect. I realized that the only way to make this world formidable was to bring more naval assets here than two response squadrons, both of which are new and fitted out with older Carracks. The Marataduur is recently arrived from Corellia, second of two prototype battlecruisers. She doesn’t look anything at all like an Imperial warship but is damned powerful and scary just to look at. In fact, there she is.”


The pair came upon a view port on the Intimidator’s starboard side through which the Grand Admiral and Imperial Supreme Commander pointed. Arrived from the awe-inspiring complex of shipyards at Corellia was one of two commissioned Hummel-class Battlecruisers. The Hummel was known to the Registrar as a battlecruiser, but she was a battleship in all truth. Armor had been forsaken to increase speed, but that very shed armor was replaced with high-powered shielding; with over a hundred heavy weapon emplacements and dozens of defensive arrays, the Hummel was able to hold her own against larger predators. As size went, she measured fourteen-hundred meters from bow to stern and was near half as wide.


“ What the frell is that?”


“ That, my skeptical friend, is the Marataduur. The prototype, [i]Hummel, is en route to Eriadu for trails. I plan to see how she measures up under combat stress. Speaking of which, are you packed?”


“ Packed? Telan, have you been spicing?”


The Grand Admiral slapped his friend on the back and chuckled. “ Did I not mention, eccentricity is a privilege of rank. We’ll both be transferring to the Marataduur. I’ve dispatched the Intimidator to Eriadu where she’ll head a squadron against some pirates operating in that area. We’re staying here, on that.”


Von Laang shuddered.


--

Specs for the Marataduur and other Hummel-class Heavy Cruisers:

http://www.swforums.net/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=635459#post635459

[Telan Desaria]

“ All hands to battlestations!” came the all-too-common cry over the Marataduur’s internal communications array. When it and its accompanying klaxon reverberated into every crevice of the newly commissioned battleship, hands scurried to do their duty. Gunners left poker games from seats made of spent shell casings; TIE pilots cancelled dejark matches; stormtroopers stopped watching re-programmed droids fight. That call was the one phrase that sent pangs of fear into the inexperienced and invoked horrid memories for those who had partaken in its utterance at least one before.


Field Marshal Fieri von Laang was seated calmly in front of his breakfast, a nice round toss cake, when the illumination in his quarters gave way to the flashing red of high alert. With a tried hand, he removed his napkin from collar and made haste towards the bridge of the warship. If his friend and naval warfare expert was anywhere to be found, the bridge it would be. And so he made his journey along the neck of the ‘neck’ of the ship then up through the innards of its head. All the way he could not help but admire how much it looked like a tyranor from his home planet of Falleen. It was doubtless a relative of whatever inspired the ship’s engineer, but he assumed it for a tyranor for his own sake.


The bridge was at the dorsal-center of the head, and from it one could see everything: above Porall, the view was magnificent, the stars tightly packed being so close to the Core and the planet below breathtaking in its brownish luminescence under a thin ring of bluish ice. The view was spectacular, von Laang thought, as he stepped onto the bridge itself, and was sorry to see war and destruction brought to such a place.


“ Raise shields, ready all weapons. Re-orient the ship to course zero, zero, niner. Match speed with the approaching ships.”


There was Grand Admiral Telan Desaria, as predicted, at the center of the bridge perched atop a chair that cold have been taken from the Intimidator’s command deck. A crew pit spun out beneath him with duty stations splayed about the periphery of the bridge. The layout was only slightly different from the Star Destroyers with which the Empire had made its name, and upon which both Desaria and von Laang had made their careers.


“What’s happening?” von Laang asked, moving towards Desaria, adjusting the Imperial Cross at his neck as he went.


“ A pair of pirates came in over the exit vector of a freightor and destroyed it. It’s a pair of Corellian corvettes and we don’t know their affiliation. Given their states of disrepair, they’re pirates. For now.”


“ Hmm?”


“ Hold that thought, Fieri.” Desaria turned to the Marataduur’s captain, a graying man not that dissimilar from the Intimidator’s Voltaire. “ Captain, you may fire when ready,”


With that, only four turbolaser blasts left the ship’s hull, two per unwanted guest. Fieri knew that was ill enough, but stood and watched. He was then quite surprised when both ships exploded brilliantly.


“ What the…?”

[Telan Desaria]

“ Fieri, may I present to you the SDT-4, the latest gift from the Imperial Department of Military Research. Four of the ship’s twenty-five are the most powerful turbolaser weapons in the galaxy. We’ve had quite a problem regulating power that’s why it’s so secretive. All told there are only seven in service: four here, on the Marataduur, two on the light cruiser Svetlana, and the original prototype on Eriadu. I tell you, since admitting that world, it seems as if the IDMR has been in heaven.”


Field Marshal von Laang stood, speechless, as he watched through fogged windows the slow dissipation of debris where two corvettes with fully operational shields had once been. As it stood, aside from the superlaser of course, heavy turbolasers were the most powerful energy weapons in use and even they needed a few shots before overpowering the shields of a Corellian Blockade Runner. A weapon that could eliminate such a ship in two linked shots could be what the Empire needed to tip the balance of power in the sector.


“ Don’t look so stunned, Fieri – I didn’t know until recently. But when I found out I needed those guns here. Unfortunately, it will take a few months before they can be put into full scale production. On the lighter side, you see, this entire region, like that around Eriadu, is crawling with pirates and for the exact same reason: both are along prosperous, highly trafficked hyperlanes. Here there will be a wealth of moving targets we can test these guns on.”


Von Laang looked out again; the debris was settling far enough apart from where the ships had once stood that in a matter of mere hours, stray fragments of Porall’s ring would smash everything larger than a meter square to bits. “ What are they called?”


Grand Admiral-Baron Desaria felt a smile tug at the ends of his mouth and gave in just perceptibly. “ Special-Definition Turbolasers, but we’ve taken to calling them super turbolasers.”

[Telan Desaria]

The day proceeded smoothly and it could have been said that it was a good day except that for all that ended, the inevitable meeting with the garrison commander, Major General Lexington, grew a day closer. Only three rotations on Porall’s axis separated that date from now, and Grand Admiral Desaria was considerably less than ecstatic.


The next went well, as did the next and the one following it. The Marataduur had seventeen opportunities to test the SDT-4s in that time, engaging twenty-eight vessels and destroying exactly half that number. One might think that the various pirate groups who had made their living thus far preying upon helpless freighters would have communicated the presence of an Imperial battleship above a hastily fortifying world amongst one another but the opposite seemed true. One group was had the back of its flotilla broken, the debris having barely cleared when another arrived to take its place.


Grand Admiral Desaria moved his flag to the Golan III Space Defense Platform Apraxin, itself the heaviest station of its time - - twenty-five years ago. There, lumbering high above Porall’s atypically calm deserts and sprawling cityscapes, Major-General Lexington would meet the Supreme Commander of the Imperial Navy for the first time.


“ Admiral, your guest has arrived and is waiting.”


Baron Desaria shook his head. The Golan IIIs, like the IVs and Vs after them, were equipped with rather lavish offices for any senior officers who sought respite there – offices that came with secretaries. Desaria was wholly unaccustomed to such frivolities as a secretary, using his aide de camp in such a role instead. It would take some time getting used to, if he stayed very long at all.


“ Admit him please.”


A quiet feminine acknowledge came through the comm system just before General Lexington, tall and lanky, stepped into the office. At first glance, every thing about the Army officer screamed war: even the black and grey of his hair was fighting for dominance, skirmishes being fought from his temples to widow’s peak.


“ May I welcome you to Porall, Grand Admiral. Have you been to the surface?”


Desaria smiled, the man uncommonly cordial for the commander of a world the General Staff had just turned from a back water command to all-important fortress. “ I have not, General. I doubt I shall have time. I came to oversee the installation of naval assets here. Colonel-Archduke Tavington is adequate?”


The General regarded Desaria for a moment as he searched the memory for the name until recognition dawned on his face. “ The arrived fortification expert. He has done well; he deserves a promotion.”


“ He’s gotten it. He’ll be Generalmajore der Pioneeren when he leaves, he just doesn’t know it yet. Now, do you know what has been ordered?”


There flared a flash of light outside the office for just a second, then it subsided into nothingness. Grand Admiral Desaria had been in space for long enough to recognize the flash of a ship exiting hyperspace. His recognition, though, was wholly superfluous, as was the instant clanging to life of the station’s alarm klaxon. Visible from behind what was a trio of pirate ships was an approaching beast-looking warship almost as large as a Star Destroyer.


“ Ah, more meat for the grinder.” The Grand Admiral turned from the viewport through which he was looking back to his guest. “ Command has ordered two Response Squadrons here, the 2nd and 3rd. They’re light cruisers and frigates and will be bringing with them some prefabricated docking facilities and the like. In short, we’ll be adding a starport the day after tomorrow.”


“ Is that all?”


“ Have you spoken with Field Marshal von Laang?”


“ Yes. We’re constructing his hangars now. Two wings of Defenders is hard to accommodate on short notice, but General Meyer has been most understanding.”


Three more flashes shone through the window, these much less punctuated than the first one, and the Grand Admiral recognized those as well. He was proven right in guessing the destruction of the attackers with the shutting off of the red alert lights strewn about the ship, his office not excluded.


“ Do we get to keep that ship?” asked Lexington to which the Grand Admiral and he shared a laugh. He was very pleased that the Army officer was not as boorish as he had been told.

[Telan Desaria]

Grand Admiral Desaria bade goodbye to a world over which he spent the majority of two weeks. His work, and more importantly, the work of his subrodinates had ensured the security of the world that water forgot.


Almost forgot, the Grand Admiral reminded himself when he thought of the four cities he had not seen - and the grand river on which they were built. For some reason he had refrained from seeing the world, odd enough as it was that almost every planet above he had served he done more than look below. Subconscious had to be the reason, Desaria reckoned, as he strolled the length of an deserted corridor during fourth watch.


I know that death shall come. I know that my presence, my dream of Empire, shall visit destruction and desolation on a world that thought it bear more of neither. I know that I am become death.


The thought was morbid, but true. Everywhere the Empire set foot, and Grand Admiral Baron Telan Desaria did as its foremost henchment, a holocaust of flame, fallen sons, or barren wastes came.


Regardless, Porall had been defended. Agreements with the Chiss had been laid down that secured more mines for the in-progress Adironak Field. The world itself had been prepared for the worst of ground assaults, given new fortresses and four thousand kilometers of breast works in a matter of months. A psace station had arrived making the aging Golan a prime target for the repairs it so desperately needed. With that platform had come twenty ships that though light cruisers, would stave off any threat any power could bring.


The worlds behind Porall were now safe, or at least defended.


Porall itself had just become the most tempting target in the Empire.