______Imagine the galaxy as an intricate tapestry, and any one life, a single thread, interwoven among hundreds-thousands-of others.
______Like ripples on still water, the impact of a single action can be traced to an infinite number of reactions.
______Ripples creating ripples-a cycle through which one event can affect the course of an entire galaxy.
______There have been precedents: the Trade Federation blockade which then- Senator Palpatine exploited to secure his election as Chancellor of the Republic; his later coronation as Emperor, and the subsequent formation of the Rebel Alliance.
______Action and reaction. Opposites colliding.
______A young girl with an emerging power that she struggles to understand. A seasoned veteran whose power and influence extends to thousands upon thousands of men under his command.
______Two vessels: one a hodgepodge of rusty modules and refurbished parts, the other, over one hundred times its mass, a symbol of fear to all peace loving peoples.
______The design of the tapestry begins to reveal itself. Inevitably, certain threads are drawn to converge, and the fate of the galaxy hangs in the balance...

______His eyes tracked the Rebel patrol ship's slow progression as it drifted across the elliptical panorama of the bridge windows. It appeared to hover over the massive Imperial Star Destroyer Vindicator, whose hull stretched out like a cityscape beneath it.
______The stark contrast of the two ships so close together was, to him, a microcosm of the conflict between the Empire and the Rebellion.
______It amazed him the lengths the Rebels were forced to sink to equip their fleet, salvaging and refitting an old cargo ship for combat, while the gleaming Star Destroyer stood as a monument to what civilized men could achieve when galvanized toward a single goal.
______
______But it made him smile nonetheless. The Rebel ship was a Starlance-class freighter. Held together by who knows what after all these years, it was the first ship he had ever served on as a thirteen-year old boy.
______Damn Rebels. He suppressed the smile, his face never betraying its stoic expression.
______All movement had ceased on the bridge of the Star Destroyer, all eyes locked on the Rebel ship. Occasionally, one or two of the junior officers would look in his direction, attempting to gauge their reaction by his own.
______Fleet Admiral Naman Janns was happy to disappoint them. He observed the enemy ship as passively and calmly as he would a status report on the repair of a trash compactor.
______Still, beneath the façade of his calm exterior...
______“Sir!” A panic-stricken lieutenant called out to him, “We're being hit by sensors!”
______“Calm down, Lieutenant,” he told him. “This is their standard sensor sweep.” The young lieutenant nodded to himself, and exhaled slowly. “If their sensors could have detected us they would have done so long ago.” Janns added.
______“Communications,” he called out, “continue to monitor all traffic from the Rebel ship.”
______“Shall I jam transmissions, sir-just in case?” the communications officer inquired.
______Janns weighed the factors in his mind, measuring the risk versus the reward. There was a good chance that the Rebels might not even detect the interference, and if they did they might chalk it up to equipment failure-or ambient radiation from space.
______Still, there was a chance, and an intuitive Captain might put two and two together, or at the very least report a strange anomaly in this sector to the Rebel base.
______“No,” Janns answered, “but that's excellent thinking.”
______He addressed the group: “I want all stations on alert.”
______
______They waited with baited breath. Piercing through the palpable silence of the bridge, they could hear the penetrating scream of the Rebel sensors painting their ship.
______Those were long range sensors, and not standard on a Starlance-class freighter. Under normal circumstances, those sensors would have detected their fleet from a parsec away.
______Still, a ship that size could only generate enough power to do long range sweeps intermittently, and that was most likely the standard ship-or at least close to it-that the Rebels could have commandeered for this task.
______Even if the fleet was detected now, learning of just that weakness in the Rebel's defenses was invaluable.
______A voice called out to him: “Targeting solution prepared, sir. Ready to fire at your command!” It was Captain Nebbins.
______“Review your orders, Captain,” Janns replied harshly. “You are simply to avoid hitting them, and nothing more. We will only fire when fired upon.”
______He didn't particularly like Nebbins, although he was favored by many of the other Admirals.
______Nebbins was a boot polisher, a spineless yes-man who would do whatever he thought required the least amount of risk, and say whatever he thought would mimic the popular consensus.
______To Janns, he was useless. There was no point in having an officer who simply agreed with every order. That wasn't an officer-it was an echo.
______“If you're still unsure about your orders, I could arrange a counseling session with Lord Vader so that he might personally clear up any misunderstanding?”
______“No, sir!” Nebbins answered swiftly. “I mean, I understand clearly, sir!” He saluted, and then returned to his console after receiving the nod from Janns. He seemed a bit smaller in stature than he was a moment ago.
______The occasional straggler still looked in his direction, drawn to the confrontation. “Mind your stations!” Janns glared at one of them, and they all returned to their posts.
______Finally, the Rebel scan abated, and the shrill echo of the long-range sensors faded.
______“Its over, sir,” the young lieutenant at the sensor station announced.
______“Excellent,” Janns replied.
______The danger had passed, and Janns felt the tension release its hold on the crew. The Rebel ship continued its slow course, almost out of the intersect range of the ship.
______A lieutenant commander shook his head in disbelief. “Why can't they see us?” he exclaimed quietly, awestruck at their proximity to the Rebel ship.
______The commander echoed the sheer amazement Janns was concealing from the other officers. They had never been this close to an enemy ship before.
______Close enough that he could see the counterparts to his own bridge crew moving about the deck, performing their various tasks.
______As much as he hated to admit it, the bridge of the Rebel ship appeared to run in good order.
______Currently, one of the Rebels-the vessel's captain, perhaps?-stood at the bridge windows, and peered into the depths of space.
______Over the course of his long career, Janns had heard rumor time and time again of experimental devices that would mask a ship from sensors. Despite the frequency of these rumors, he had never seen even a prototype for one of these devices in operation.
______But even the most outlandish rumors never mentioned the ability to turn the entire ship invisible.
______And even if they did exist, there were no such devices on board.
______They were line of sight to the Rebel ship, and it was inconceivable that they remained undetected.
______Yet there were no communications, no alarms. They didn't even raise their deflector shields. There was no indication whatsoever that the Rebels had spotted the fleet that their ship had intersected.
______If he weren't seeing it with his own eyes, he'd never believe it.
______“Rebel scum,” an anonymous voice casually exclaimed. Most likely it was said loud enough for everyone to hear on purpose, an attempt to curry favor, but it had an interesting reaction.
______The faces of many of his officers hardened. Hands clenched into fists. Muscles tightened, ready to spring at the slightest provocation.
______Their anger was evidence of the hatred they felt toward the Rebels, a calculated reaction created by the Imperial propaganda machine.
______Janns didn't hate the Rebels. Far from it. It was simply his duty to wage war, and to him war was not an emotional business. Emotions clouded one's judgement, and in his position he could not allow that to happen. Hate was a luxury he could not afford.
______He studied the Rebel ship. That they had gotten the thirty-year old freighter space-worthy was a testament to the resourcefulness of the Rebel engineers-or the desperation.
______From his intimate knowledge of the Starlance-class, he could see instantly that parts of the ship had been 'borrowed' from other vessels.
______The freighter was, to him, an ironic metaphor for the Rebellion itself: a disorganized union of rejected parts that barely functioned with a little bit of luck and a great deal of maintenance.
______What was amazing was that such a mishmash of dysfunctional pieces was even considered a nuisance to the Empire, much less a threat.
______Careful, he thought to himself. That 'nuisance' just destroyed the most potent weapon ever devised.
______It was so easy to underestimate the Rebellion, and that was a trap he was not going to fall prey to.
______That had been Tarkin's mistake. He was sure of it. The Governor was an efficient, although callously violent officer, but his arrogance was legendary.
______Janns had only met him once, but he'd seen evidence of then-Admiral Tarkin's hubris while attending a Senate function to honor the Emperor.
______Tarkin had just been appointed Regional Governor, and openly boasted, at the Emperor's own party, that his true goals would only be realized when he was governor of Coruscant itself.
______Of course, Coruscant has no governor. The Emperor Palpatine serves as the chief administrator for all functions both planetary and Imperial.
______Such was the inference that Tarkin was making. Janns had to give him credit for his bravery, although it seemed his common sense had been a casualty of his blind ambition.
______Janns always thought Tarkin was a poor example of what a commanding officer should be, and his meteoric rise through the chain of command, based more on politics than on merit, was to him an indication that the upper echelons of the Imperial Navy were in desperate need of restructuring.
______And in a way, that was beginning to happen.
______Nebbins had good reason to be afraid. They all did.
______Even you, he reminded himself.
______Recently, Lord Vader had begun a rather unpopular program of rapid promotion.
______Failure to deliver the results Lord Vader expected-even if those expectations weren't always within reason-met with a silent, and invisible death.
______He could reach across the depths of space, and extinguish a man's life without touching him. Janns had seen it happen to twice so far, and it didn't look very pleasant.
______Occasionally, the officer chosen to succeed the deceased was the hapless, and often unwilling individual standing closest to the corpse, the first act of promotion being to unclip the bars of rank from their predecessor's chest.
______Actually, Nebbins was very lucky. Captain was the rank to be now. A Captain was able to boss a good number of people around, and unless Lord Vader massacred the entire officer corps in an angry tirade, one wasn't likely to be in the line of fire anytime soon.
______Of course, for those seeking upward mobility, now was definitely the time to be in the Imperial Navy.
______The corner of his mouth pulled up into a slight smile. At times he amused himself, but he knew his sarcasm was just a way to cope with the specter of his possible demise.
______When he said that the ranks of the Navy needed cleaning, his thinking was more aligned toward forced early retirement. Not this way-although it was much more efficient in a strictly fiduciary sense.
______There you go again. The murder of the officers, regardless of whether or not they were incompetent, was such an extreme reaction, and Janns rarely favored extremes.
______This new policy was bad for morale, and, in his opinion, hampered both efficiency and development. Now, everyone was so afraid of making a decision requiring personal accountability that there was no way to distinguish any of the real talent that existed within the ranks of the navy.
______The next generation of Admirals languished away in obscurity, afraid to do anything that might earn them unwanted attention. It was best that Lord Vader never knew their name, and that they remained just one of the anonymous faces that populated this ship.
______The Navy's career fast track had all but disappeared...
______The Rebel ship passed the intercept course of the Star Destroyer, and Janns ordered the fleet to move ahead at half-speed until they were out of range of the Rebel sensors.
______A herd of officers approached him, all but one displaying Admiral's bars.
______Two of them, Admiral Tieg and Captain Uvul, presented him with the battle plans for the assault on Yavin IV. He looked over the plans approvingly.
______“We ordered the changes you requested,” Uvul informed him. Janns nodded in acknowledgement.
______One of the other admirals chimed in: “This will surely spell the end of the Rebellion.” Janns simply glanced up at him momentarily, and then back down at the report.
______“Yes, Admiral,” Uvul retorted, “and your input was evidence of your expertise.”
______Janns allowed a slight smile to cross his face. He knew the Admiral had nothing to do with the plans. Everyone there did. He was simply maneuvering to attach himself to its potential success.
______Uvul had all but called him on it. While only a Captain, he held his own in such esteemed company rather well.
______Being brilliant helped. He didn't have to rely on riding the success of others to advance his career. And he wasn't concerned about impressing superior officers who were considerably less talented than he.
______Perhaps 'superior' wasn't the proper term. Higher-ranking was more appropriate.
______“And your suspicions about the trials for the new TIE were correct,” Admiral Tieg said, “They're range isn't near the original estimates, and they're slower than rocks.”
______“I thought those numbers looked a little optimistic,” Janns said.
______“We removed them from the assault,” Tieg informed him. “I didn't think you'd want them as the vanguard of the attack.”
______“You were correct,” he affirmed.
______Tieg and Uvul were an excellent team, and, while the latter was only a Captain, they formed what consisted of Janns' advisory committee. They were free to give their feedback and suggestions to him, understanding that of course he had the final decision.
______As always, the report they had prepared held rigidly to the Imperial standard, and their recommendations were insightful.
______“Excellent work, gentlemen,” Janns complimented. Neither of them answered, which was odd.
______He wasn't looking at Uvul's face, but in his peripheral vision he noticed the man's body stiffen.
______“Admiral!” Tieg whispered. He glanced up from the report, and Tieg was gesturing with his eyes to a point behind him. Something had caught their attention, because the other officers were staring at it also. Some of them looked horrified, and one of the Admirals had turned completely white.
______A moment later he realized why.
______The even, methodical placement of boot heels impacted on the metal deck plates, heralding the chilling sound of a mechanical breathing apparatus.
______Janns body straightened unconsciously, as if his natural instincts were preparing him for danger. He felt vulnerable with his back facing the black draped figure. He forced himself to retain control, and very consciously turned only his head to face the Imperial Navy's supreme commander.
______Darth Vader lumbered toward him, his heavy black cape billowing around him.
______“Ah, Lord Vader,” he said as calmly as he could muster, “We're reviewing the--”
______“Admiral,” the Sith Lord interrupted, “I want you to explain why you changed the battle plan for the assault on the Rebel base.”
______For a moment, his breath halted in his chest. He didn't know what to say. He was hoping to discuss this with Vader after they made the changes-in private. He didn't want to tell his superior officer that he was wrong in front of a group of people.
______Why was he forcing the confrontation?
______Maybe he's planning to kill you, some very helpful voice in the back of his mind suggested.
______“Well, sir,” he began tentatively, “I looked again at the results of the trials for the prototype TIE bomber, and they were...less than inspiring.
______“I didn't want our first strike to simply rouse the Rebels from their sleep. I want it to be devastating. So I removed the bombers, and assigned the fleet bombardment to be the first wave of the assault.
______I also doubled the assignment of tie fighters to the aerial attack. I'd rather have men with nothing to shoot at than let this opportunity slip by.”
______There was a pause. Tieg and Uvul looked from each other to Janns, but never at Vader.
______He never took his eyes away from Janns, and that mask prevented any insight into what thoughts the Sith Lord was pondering.
______For what seemed like an eternity, Janns never wavered from his piercing stare, vaguely wondering if these moments would be his last.
______“Very good, Admiral...” Vader finally replied. “Report any further changes to me immediately.”
______“Yes, sir,” Janns replied. “Of course, sir.” He was quite relieved, and could see by the expressions of Tieg and Uvul that they shared his sentiment.
______He realized that he had just been reprimanded by Lord Vader, and moreover that he'd lived to tell the tale.
______Vader turned, and walked away. Uvul placed his hand to his chest.
______Tieg exhaled audibly. He breathed heavily, unaware that he had been holding his breath for the duration of the confrontation.
______“I say, Admiral,” he began, “that was a close--”
______Janns walked away, ignoring the two of them. He would apologize for his lack of etiquette later.
______He followed after Vader, and intercepted him before he reached the turbo shaft.
______“Lord Vader!” he called out. The Sith Lord stopped, and swung his broad shoulders toward Janns.
______There was no one in the vicinity, and as Janns looked around he realized that he was following an impulse that hadn't exactly blossomed into a full-fledged plan. He wasn't sure why he had pursued Vader, and whatever he had wanted to say to him escaped him now.
______Vader said nothing, simply waiting for the Admiral to speak. Janns searched for the words that eluded him.
______“Sir, the appearance of this Rebel ship...its created quite a stir.”
______Vader turned to face him completely, and Janns realized just how large of a creature he was. A thought struck him that he didn't really know if Vader was even human.
______What might he see underneath that black mask?
______“You seek an explanation, Admiral?” Vader replied, and his tone set Janns on alert. He was being lured.
______“Of course, you needn't explain yourself to me or anyone else--”
______“That is correct, Admiral.” was his simple reply.
______It seemed that the conversation was over. Janns waited for Vader to excuse him, or simply walk away. But he did neither.
______“Admiral,” the Sith Lord spoke, “do you know why you are afforded liberties that the other officers are not...?”
______The question hung in the air between them. It confirmed something that he'd always suspected, but never dared articulate.
______But it also put him on the spot. How should he respond? Should he be honest, or try to think of the political way, the safe way, to answer this question?
______Speaking his mind had been the foundation of his career, and he didn't see much chance of him being able to change now.
______Here goes. “Because, like all living creatures, you are fallible, and you realize that you need at least one person you can trust to tell you what you need to hear, regardless of whether or not its what you want to hear...”
______There was another long pause. Another eternity for Janns to contemplate his own mortality.
______“That is correct, Admiral...” the Sith Lord replied. Janns' heart resumed beating again. “Do not disappoint me,” he warned.
______“I won't,” Janns vowed.
______The turbo shaft door opened, and Vader stepped into the elevator. The Admiral stepped forward.
______“Sir, if I may?” he said. “How is it that the Rebels didn't see us?”
______Vader paused. “There are many mysteries to the universe, Admiral,” he replied. “This is one of them...”
______The door to the elevator closed, ending the conversation.
______Janns turned, and drifted slowly toward the bridge windows. He contemplated the Sith Lord's cryptic words.
______He peered out the bridge windows, half absorbed by his own reflection, and realized that a strange thing had occurred. Somewhere along the way, he had earned Vader's confidence. He would not betray that confidence.
______“Helm,” he ordered, “resume course for Yavin...”
______If Lord Vader was correct, and if the actions of the patrol ship were any indication, the Rebels had no warning of the impending attack. The nearest Imperial fleet was halfway across the galaxy-or so they thought.
______“Full speed ahead,” he continued.
______He surveyed the diorama of the Vindicator's bridge. The crew of this massive war machine operated with absolute precision, and in the culmination of their efforts lay the decimation of the Rebel Alliance.
______He looked beyond the crew, to the ship itself: the sight of the Imperial Star Destroyer inspired him, and he was suddenly grasped by the futility of anyone who opposed the might of the Imperial Navy.
______As he contemplated the view, Janns recalled the other Admiral's premature proclamation of victory.
______Only a fool would guarantee success, but the patrol ship's casual defenselessness was a portent that the Rebel base was just as vulnerable.
______If executed properly, the hapless Rebels would never know what hit them.
______Janns caught sight of his reflection. He was smiling.
______He concealed his emotions, and the crew witnessed only the stoic image of their commander that he allowed them to see.
______But contained within him, rising like the tide, thundered the echo of the Admiral's bold declaration:
______This will surely spell the end of the Rebellion!