Ports and Reclamation

[Ulysses Cygnus, Jr]

How do I feel about the Galactic Empire?

I was seventeen when Sheev Palpatine made his last speech as Supreme Chancellor. "The first Galactic Empire, for a safe and secure society." That was what he promised, and he delivered. He brought an end to millennia of corruption and petty bickering in the Senate. He brought an end to the galaxy's reliance on religious fanatics to mediate our disputes. He replaced the bloated bureaucracy that had grown fat and greedy over the centuries with something ordered, and organized. He ended the petty competativeness of the corporate galaxy, choosing the best options available and relying upon them for everything. Sovereign worlds became united like never before, because the alternative simply wasn't permitted. We stopped being a thousand star systems, and became one galaxy, one Empire.

Yes, there are negatives about the Empire, though it's not always wise to state them out loud. They may be ruthless, but that allows them to be ruthlessly efficient and effective. The Empire is something to be feared, but you fear them because they are finally capable of getting things done. Under Palpatine, we have better education, better infrastructure, and a better future. We are safer, healthier, and more secure in our jobs and our lives than we were under the Republic. We're even freer, believe it or not, because the rules are clearly defined and known to all. Civilization is about structure and order: under the Empire our galaxy is more civilized than ever.

I am Ulysses Cygnus Junior, the Senior Overseer for Ports and Reclamation on Cloud City, Bespin, and I support my Galactic Empire.


* * *

Ulysses tugged covertly at the cuffs of his Bespin Wing Guard jacket, trying to dissuade the still-itchy fabric of his newly requisitioned undershirt from wriggling its way up his forearms. The edge of the pristine shirt's high collar chafed against stubble that had been freshly shaved six hours ago, and he could feel the back edge of his hat's peak pressing a groove into the slightly sweat and humidity moistened skin of his forehead. Ulysses endured stoically through it, understanding the importance of this uniform formality. Usually the standard garb of the Wing Guards was eschewed by those working on the lower levels, reserved for those serving above the Clean Line - what those in the Guard colloquially called the divide between the bottom of the administrative sectors on Level 120, and the top of the industrial sectors on 121. Down here in Port Town - Levels 121 through 160 - such a clean and pristine Wing Guard was an oddity: if a Guard was here among this kind of filth without some of it rubbing off on them, odds were they hadn't been here long. That usually meant either a rookie had mistakenly wandered into the wrong neighbourhood, or something bad enough to call in reinforcements from on high was about to go down.

Today it was neither. Today, the carefully safeguarded uniform - changed into on his break only twenty-eight minutes ago - was a sign of loyalty and respect. When the request had arrived at his office, he'd thought it was a prank, but a little digging had unearthed enough validity to assuage his scepticism. Somehow, Ceto Rübezahl had wheeled and dealed his way into securing the services of a honest-to-Palpatine Imperial Guard to help with his damned Corporate Javin gentrification scheme, and after the recent scuffle on Tibannopolis he was apparently here for the long term to shore up security.

Ulysses could not be happier. Many of his peers bristled at the thought of that kind of Imperial oversight, but Ulysses welcomed it. He longed for the days of the Imperial occupation and the Iron Blockade, when the Empire had taken total and martial control over law and order. For a few blissful years, the shadier and more criminal aspects from below the Clean Line had begun to recoil and retreat like shadows from a flame. Then politics had screwed it all up. Image became important. The Empire installed its Minister of Propaganda as Baroness Administrator, Governor Rübezahl began his business schemes, and gradually the Stormtroopers in the streets gave way to less conspicuous law enforcement once more. It was a shame, a step backwards, and Ulysses had said all along that they were asking for trouble - today that stance was vindicated, and the decision was being reversed with crimson commitment.

The Overseer braced himself as the turbolift doors opposite cracked open. It was the fifth time since he had been standing here, and his awaited Imperial Guardsman had not stepped forth yet. When the parting doors revealed that first flash of red, Ulysses visibly straightened; a moment later the elated anticipation faltered, settling on a set of human features instead of the menacingly blank mask that he had seen only from a distance during parades as a child. The man was undeniably the Guard in question, and Ulysses understood why the usual helm and cloak was impractical in a situation such as this, but it felt like a strange betrayal to be reminded that there was a human individual beneath all that carefully designed uniform neutrality.

Ulysses didn't let the anticlimax throw him for long. He stepped forward, perhaps a with a little more formality than was entirely necessary. "Guardsman Tahmores?" he asked in a rhetorical tone. "I'm Overseer Cygnus. We corresponded earlier this morning."

[Aiden Tahmores]

There was not enough caf in the universe to fix the way today was going.

The problem wasn't anything Aiden had done, it was this blasted planet, and it's blasted orbit around it's blasted sun. Every planet in the galaxy had a slightly different day-night cycle, because every planet was slightly different. A little bigger or smaller, a little closer to or further from the parent star, a little variation in axial tilt, and all that good stuff. Fortunately, planets that were habitable for human, humanoid, and human-ish life fell within roughly the same ballpark. Net result: a day was pretty much a day wherever you went, give or take an our here or there.

But then there were places like Bespin that took all that and threw it out the window. This wasn't some damp and green ball of rock on which life could naturally evolve. This wasn't even a planet you could actually stand on, just a giant ball of mostly deadly gas, that for some inexplicable reason was breathable at certain altitudes. Aiden didn't understand the science of all that, and didn't try to; but he did understand that this gas ball spun damned fast. A day on Bespin was only twelve standard hours. At face value that might not seem like much of a problem: just sleep once every two cloud-days, right? Sadly, the human body did not function like that. From some half-remembered biology lesson in his teens, Aiden remembered that the natural sleep cycle of the human race was configured to sleep for short periods twice a day. He remembered this, because it made for a fantastic excuse if you fell asleep during afternoon history lessons; although weirdly his teachers and professors never found that fact as interesting or valid as Aiden did, if their shouting and detention-issuing was anything to go by. That humans slept for a significant chunk every twenty-four hours was more of a social construct than an evolutionary one, so somewhere deep down in his physiology, Aiden's body was telling him that sleeping every twelve hours was a really good idea, and the corresponding darkness was not helping at all.

If this had been a short-term assignment, Aiden would have just muscled through. Sleep every two days, plenty of caf; he could survive a few weeks on a lifestyle like that before it started to take it's toll. After the Tibannopolis Situation however - the name of the inevitable Ceto Rübezahl-produced holomovie that Aiden was hoping would inevitably chart his heroics - things were starting to look a little bit more long term on this whole Cloud City assignment, and so Aiden had taken it upon himself to try and get this damned sleep cycle thing figured out and sorted. So far it wasn't working, and while Aiden had enough stims and caffeine to keep his mind focused enough to do his job, he was slowly starting to feel more and more like a background extra in some sort of Rakghoul apocalypse movie.

He hadn't quite been ready for the elevator to come to a halt, but the slightly uncomfortable jolt of the decelerators engaging gave him enough of a nudge to be prepared for whatever Port Town decided to throw at him. Apparently though, the only welcoming committee the seedier - and, Aiden hoped, more fun - levels of Cloud City had prepared was a committee of one, looking all fancy in his special blue uniform. On the upside, at least he wasn't saluting or expecting a handshake or anything: that kind of behaviour always made Aiden feel uncomfortable. Everyone was in awe of the Imperial Guards, and rightly so; but few people seemed to grasp the idea that Guardsmen spent the vast majority of their time in solitary silence, and weren't exactly wired or practised in any kind of multiple person situation that didn't involve some sort of brawl or evisceration.

Aiden also hadn't been expecting the moustache. Sweet blazes, that thing was magnificent. That momentary thought cemented Aiden's decision that he would like this Overseer Cygnus guy, until the inevitable moment when the guy did something annoying that would reverse that decision. Aiden estimated three minutes: that was the usual expiration on his patience for people around here.

"Right, right," Aiden responded, frowning as he nodded in the hopes that it might help dislodge some useful thoughts. "Docking and Sanitation or something, right?"

[Ulysses Cygnus, Jr]

Ulysses bristled at the butchered rendering of his duties, but wrestled with himself to avoid any outward sign beyond a moderate scrunching of his moustache. It was understandable, after all. This was an Imperial Guard. He had far more important things to fill his mind with than the trivialities of job descriptors on one backwater planet among countless thousands of Imperial worlds. The important thing was that the Guard was here, doing his due diligence, making these mistakes early on in a safe environment so that they wouldn't be made later in a situation where it really mattered.

"Ports and Reclamation," the Overseer corrected, as politely and gently as he could manage.

For a moment he considered leaving it at that, but the opportunity for enlightenment and education dangled tantalisingly before him, and he couldn't resist the opportunity to explain himself, and the significance of his role and standing.

"It's actually a geographical title, rather than one that refers to function. Cloud City is divided into various tiers, each one specialised towards a different facet of the City's operation and economy. At the top there is Tourism, Housing, and the Administration levels. Below us are the Manufacturing levels, and the Refinement facilities for Tibanna gas; and deeper there are the repulsorlift systems that keep us aloft. Here in the middle, between Level 121 and Level 160, is what is colloquially known as Port Town. It's essentially Cloud City's starport district, complete with anything you'd find on any other world: warehouses, repair yards, spacer motels, dive bars, the odd exclusive night club, and more crime and corruption than you can shake a Force Pike at."

His eyes narrowed, a proud breath pulled in through the Overseer's nose.

"It's a wild frontier down here, Tahmores: the seedy underbelly of Cloud City; and I'm the one the Administration chose to preserve some semblance of civilization down here."

[Aiden Tahmores]

Keeping a straight face: it was a skill that the uniform of an Imperial Guard had allowed to atrophy. It was easy to stand there stoically with a featureless mask weighing down on your shoulders, viewing the world through a teeny tiny visor; but out here in the real world, exposed and helmetless, it was an act that required a considerable amount of focus and effort. Aiden decided to lean into bemused, an expression that was readily available at the moment; better that than the amused smirk that wanted to form in response to the Overseer's sheer pride at his quaint little job.

He supposed he shouldn't judge, nor be a dick about it. It was an important job, probably. He didn't know much about Cloud City beyond what he'd read in the Imperial reports; and his whole reason for meeting the Overseer in person was to avoid having to read through the countless trillions of Wing Guard reports that had been submitted just in the last year. If the file sizes were anything to go on, a lot happened here on Cloud City: a lot of trivial nothingness, perhaps, but if Overseer Cygnus said that this was Bespin: Crime Central, then Tahmores was in absolutely no position to doubt that. The Overseer made a fair point, too: if this really was like starport district on other Outer Rim worlds that he had visited, then it absolutely was where the smuggling, trafficking, and shady business was likely to go down. Aiden wasn't entirely sure why, but criminal types really seemed to love a good warehouse district.

The fact that Cygnus' name had even come up at all added further credence to his claims. Now that he was on loan to the Greater Javin gentrification project, Governor Rübezahl had tasked him with evaluating security. All the careful and evasive wording aside, Rübezahl wanted a number: how many Stormtroopers, or private security, or what-have you, would it take to make Cloud City and Tibannopolis safe for the influx of new business and new wealthy folks that Bespin was in the process of attracting? The Moff wanted Bespin to be the jewel in the crown of his new Corporate Sector, and that would be for nought if that jewel was seated in a grimy and corroded fitting. Aiden had glibly suggested the Lord Vader approach of throwing a Stormtrooper legion at the problem and hoping for the best; but Rübezahl wanted subtlety and style. Whether that came in the form of an Imperial force, an expansion of the Wing Guard, or some corporate third party was yet to be determined, and Aiden's assessment would play a part in that decision. So, no pressure or anything.

Aiden tried to make himself sound impressed. "So you're responsible for everything from here downwards, or just the Port Town levels?"

[Ulysses Cygnus, Jr]

The Overseer's moustache wrinkled, encroaching upwards into the region of facial real estate that his nose was intended to occupy. There was a simple answer to that question, and then there was the follow-on tirade of exactly how Ulysses felt about that particular simple answer. If he were to describe the current security arrangements on Cloud City as cobbled together by Jawas, that would probably have been overly generous. They were a relic from the haphazard days of Lando Calrissian as Baron Administrator, exacerbated when his reckless abandon had turned into reckless abandonment. Perhaps when a cybernetically enhanced mind had been responsible for coordinating the city's operation it had been able to function adequately, but not even an Imperial occupation had been able to hold that structure aloft; and now, the criminal underworld had begun to exploit the cracks that formed as that structure slowly began to collapse.

"A little of both, and a little of neither."

Through sheer force of will, Ulysses managed to keep his complaints to a moderate minimum. It would be disingenuous to try and convince the Guardsman that everything was satisfactory - after all, it was his sincere hope that Tahmores was here to fix everything that the negligence of past administrators had created - but at the same time, this was an agent of the Empire, an agent of the Empress in fact; and it simply would not do if he left an impression that was in any way unflattering.

"My main responsibility is anything arriving to or leaving from Cloud City. That includes everything that passes through Port Town, but also arrivals through the passenger platforms in the upper levels, and material shipments to and from the manufacturing complexes. I deal with customs, smuggling, illegal trafficking, extraction and disposal, liquor licencing, gun registration, visitor admissions, residential applications -"

He trailed off, for fear of losing the Guardsman's interest and engagement. He took a moment to collect himself, steering back towards Tahmores' specific inquiry.

"Port Town and below has the highest concentration of my responsibilities, but it's not just that, and not all of that. You won't catch me or my department running security checks or chasing down pickpockets, but we don't lose interest once you ascend through Level 120 either. Other Overseers keep the people inside the city safe, but me and mine are the watchers at the walls."

[Aiden Tahmores]

Three minutes might have been too generous an estimate. It wasn't anything in particular that the Overseer said or did; it was just the air about him, that attitude that forced some people to pander to their own egos because no one else was willing to do it for them. It was harmless enough for the most part, but it was something Aiden already spent far too much of his life forced to deal with. Such was life when the Imperial upper echelons surrounded you on all sides.

Still, the Overseer's summation was useful. Aiden mentally walked through his experiences on Cloud City, recalling the instances where he'd encountered members of the Wing Guard, assessing whether or not Ports and Relcaimation had been involved. Despite the subtle hints of dissatisfaction that Aiden had picked up on from the Overseer, he had to admit there was a certain understandable logic to the way things were considered. There were aspects that resembled law enforcement in more conventional cities. Agencies like CorSec distributed their officers based on the kinds of crimes they investigated and responded to. Homicide. Narcotics. Cybercrime. Vice. Different areas of expertise, different requirements for training, different resources and equipment. It echoed certain aspects of military security too, particularly when dealing with fortified bases and installations: controlling the entry and exit of men and materiel was always a central objective.

There were pros and cons to that sort of arrangement. Of particular frustration to Aiden was the fact that he'd likely need to deal with this Overseer a considerable amount, which was a prospect he did not relish. Of more relevance to his duties however, the sprawling nature of Ports and Reclaimation made it hard to expand upon without becoming bloated and unwieldy. Tibannopolis wouldn't need security officers trained to deal with a large transient or residential population, or to stem the flow of restricted substanes, but to borrow and bolster only certain aspects of the Overseer's division while ignoring the rest was a recipe for the kind of jurisdictional awkwardness that made the Imperial bureaucracy such a headache. The alternative however, duplicating the functions that Tibannopolis would require, came with it's own problems and inefficiencies. People on Cloud City knew the Wing Guard, and people were generally more at ease wiith civilian security than military. A Tibannopolis guard that was distinct from the Wing Guard would be like trying to catch a shoal of fish with two nets crudely hooked together: if you weren't careful, and you'd leave enough of a gap that the whole thing would be essentially useless.

Aiden fought the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. People did that a lot in this sort of situation, as if it was somehow capable of staving off the headache that such intensive thought could cause. For Aiden, it never seemed to work. Perhaps he'd have to try and deal with the source of all this directly instead: find some way to make his cousin share at least a taste of Aiden's suffering.

"You're only boots on the ground sort of stuff though, right? Ports doesn't cover landing approaches, or those fancy airspeeders zipping around, or anything like that?"