This one's a win-win because it could be either an important step to setting up a local power base or a way to get into the NR's good graces by stopping a massacre.
[X] [Fleet] -securing the weapons prototypes that Admiral Verso requested.
We can do fleet exercises anytime, but advanced weaponry and equipment will be damn near irreplaceable with the Empire in chaos. (Weakening our fleet by transferring our squadrons to some mysterious commander in the Deep Core with no explanation or purpose is obviously right out.)
[X] [Vaere] -that meeting with Governor Weizel.
[X] [Fleet] -securing the weapons prototypes that Admiral Verso requested.
If it really is Palpatine I'm not even Vaere herself would like to help him considering he's gone completely bonkers and doesn't even have powerful advisors this time.
I like getting in good with the governor since we spurned the other, but I can see investigating the core as potentially useful. On the other vote, fancy TIEs are nice but those platforms are extremely suspicious. Not sure we want to be seen anywhere near them.
I like getting in good with the governor since we spurned the other, but I can see investigating the core as potentially useful. On the other vote, fancy TIEs are nice but those platforms are extremely suspicious. Not sure we want to be seen anywhere near them.
They're definitely going to be used for Operation Cinder, but Vaere doesn't know that. And anyway, we may have an option to withhold them from Versio after acquiring them.
They're definitely going to be used for Operation Cinder, but Vaere doesn't know that. And anyway, we may have an option to withhold them from Versio after acquiring them.
Honestly, the hunters are going to be the least impressive part of what we're getting from that; that infantry equipment would be extremely helpful for any special ops things we'll need to do, however slim the chance of that can be. And the Navy troppers would be a lot more appreciate of those gifts, to say nothing about our stormtrooper compliment.
And if there's even a sliver of a chance that chance has a Katarn-Class Armour in it...
[Vaere] -that meeting with Governor Weizel.
[Fleet] -securing the weapons prototypes that Admiral Verso requested
Chaos V
24 Days, 18 Hours after the Battle of Endor
Chandrila System, Bormea Sector
-
She may be a Coruscanti born and raised who's spent her life in the black of the void, but days like this made Shara Vaere glad that Chandrila wasn't getting destroyed in a fit of Imperial pique -Force rest the Emperor's soul.
Idyllic weather, lush plantlife, adorable little squalls wandering down neatly maintained boulevards with quaint white painted cafes.
She could almost picture herself as one of pleasant people hustling past as if nothing was wrong. Just her hand in hand with some pretty face with a sharp mind talking about the issues of the day.
Shame about the Stormtroopers in white and Army Infantry in grey on every corner. But every paradise had its rats. She'd much rather they be trustworthy men and women in Navy black.
But those rats were why she was in Hanna city once more to meet with Governor Weizel. As she stepped around a street corner, she was confronted with a busy cafe and the sight of Governor Weizel alone at a table offset from the others. He was waving at her, broad face beaming as if happy to see an old friend.
Governor Weizel's unassuming face had actually become as familiar as that of an old friend's to Admiral Shara Vaere over the past three weeks.
If Vaere was honest, and she sometimes was with herself, Gerald Weizel looked exactly like what she'd picture if someone gave her ten seconds to imagine the phrase "Core World Governor".
He was average height (shorter than Vaere), a little paunchy in that middle aged man way, well groomed, with brown hair and a mustache that were equally as fastidiously trimmed.
Weizel eschewed the fashion that some Governors had of wearing an unearned uniform, thinking that technical command of military forces was equal to military service, a trait that Vaere deeply disapproved of. Instead Wiezel wore a rich velvet cloak that was tailored to almost obscure his paunch.
He wore that one a lot. Or did he have multiple of that cloak? Vaere couldn't tell.
"Shara! A delight as always!" Weizel's smile broad but almost genuine, as he welcomed her to his table, "Please, sit, join me!" he said with a flourish of his hand that had the Chandrilan server pulling a chair out for the Imperial Admiral.
Vaere sat with a quiet thank you to her server, and nodded respectfully to the Governor, "Governor Weizel," she looked around at the busy outside cafe that the governor had chosen for this meeting, at the bustling customers and servers that were being gently lead away from their table to sit, "Unless this cafe has a similar menu to Indefatigable's officer's mess, I'm afraid you'll have to pick for us."
As always.
"Ah, excellent, I already took the opportunity to ply you with an excellent comet wine I've recently stumbled across in my little forays across the countryside. And I've asked the chef to reproduce this absolutely delightful four course lunch I had here last spring," his hands fly through the air in almost random paths as he speaks, "You said you liked that meal we had at Vassery's last week, and I saw your expression when you had those icesquash puffs a couple days ago, so I'm certain you'll be absoluuuutely head over heels delighted with today's lunch." he finishes with a flourish that has somehow picked up a glass of wine that Vaere hadn't even noticed.
Vaere had to admit that while she didn't have much of a palate for fine foods, or even foods in general, the last few weeks had had the benefit of delivering her some excellent meals, "As I've said, before, a refined palate is not what I bring to the table, Governor."
The man chuckles and points at her with self evident delight before motioning to their server to pour her a glass of the… Comet wine, the bright sunlight reflecting through the blue liquid and crystal glass and weaving a lightshow of gentle rainbow like characteristics until the pour is completed.
As the server steps back as Vaere picks up the long stemmed wine glass, Weizel waves the man away with a smile, "That will be all for now, Niemar, it's regrettably time for business before lunch."
As the server bows respectfully and retreats from the table Vaere pulls out some kind of mechanical device and leaves it on the table as a red light blinks to life.
"There we are, now he'll know that we're meeting but now what we're talking about."
Weizel regards the device curiously and takes a small sip from his own long-stemmed glass, "That as good as you say it is?"
"Yes, it's from… my special supplier." Technically a gift from Admiral Versio, but in reality it was from the Brentaal IV storage facility she'd had her people ransack. There wasn't just military equipment and prototype weapons satellites placed there, but ISB grade espionage equipment. Including a top of the line masker.
Vaere had dispatched Vice Admiral Seles to oversee the transfer and the woman seems to have had a religious experience the first time she took a TIE Hunter out on a test flight.
Vaere herself didn't see the big deal with the craft, being just TIE interceptors with shields and hyperdrives. Handy yes, but hardly game changers. But Seles couldn't stop talking about all the opportunities they'd open up once she'd rounded up the kind of skilled pilots she wanted flying her new darlings.
"Well, it'd better work, or there's a chance that the General's man there," Weizel subtly tips his wine glass towards a clearly out of his element young man sitting alone at a table that Vaere hadn't noticed until now, "will be getting us killed in the near future."
"Hmm." says Vaere, sipping at her glass. It wasn't bad rotten fruit juice, but she honestly hadn't the ability to determine if it was good either.
"I don't know how much longer I can keep his boys out of the Capital streets." Weizel grouses as his nose wrinkles in distaste, "Everywhere else has seen at least a little blood, and no one I talk to is willing to do anything about it, even my benefactor" Vaere was plugged in enough to know he meant Grand Admiral Rufaan Tigellinus (More a beast of the Imperial Court than a man of the Imperial Navy) who was also Grand Moff of the Imperial Center Oversector that contained the galactic capitals itself., "who seems to be a bit too busy with other matters to attend to the calls of a mere planetary governor."
"Undoubtedly he's found himself busy wrangling with the Regent and the Ruling Council or figuring out what to do about Haarsk's so called 'Zero Command'"
"Nasty business that. We're supposed to pull together in a crisis!" says the man in mock credulousness, mustache bristling at the impropriety of an Admiral trying to carve his own kingdom out of the deep core.
Vaere signs, "I suspect he may be the first of many, if Thiromer's idiocy isn't isolated."
"And we come to the heart of the matter," says the Governor, "It may be a working lunch, but I'd like to separate the enjoying food part and the hashing out stressful details part."
Vaere nods, she doesn't know why, but the man always surprised her with his willingness to get down to business, "Of course, I've decided on-"
[ ] -arresting him for insubordination.
"He's been ignoring your orders and he's been strong-arming Naval personnel. We'd be well within our rights to arrest the man. If that works, we can order his men back into their barracks.
"Afterwards, we just leave them there until new orders come in.
"Of course, it would be impossible to keep him from seeing it coming and he could just decide that you and I also count as rebels that need shooting. But even then his people will have to be torn between their commander and the civilian chain of command.
If it doesn't work, then my people are going to have to fight his people. The Navy will win of course. But it could get messy."
[ ] -arrainging his assassination.
"It turns out a lot of this gear I just picked up from my special supplier would come in handy here.
"We kill him, you take control, we come up with a good story, maybe pin the job on some of our rebel prisoners and let them swing for it."
"It'll likely work, but if we miss, that's going to make things worse. And if he finds out, then it's all out war and the entire Army will be on his side.
[ ] -we undermine him with his men.
"It will take longer, a lot longer, and might not work, but I don't want to risk starting a shooting war between the Army and the Navy. The Navy would win, of course. But that's still a failure state I'm not at all happy contemplating. But they have to know that you're the real power here.
If this fails, we can always go to a more extreme solution, one hopefully aided by the groundwork we've laid. But who knows what this rampaging rancor will get up to in the meantime.