Ghosts in the Ether

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

"Captain, incoming Holonet comms, from Captain Terius."

Lieutenant Mallin didn't waste any time as Cirr stepped on the bridge, fresh from an engine room inspection and usual fussing with his engineer. So much the better. He needed a diversion to keep him from pestering below decks too much. It was a compulsion difficult to ignore for the ex-engineer.

"jI'll take jit jin mjy offjice, Ljieutenant."

The Cizerack took a detour from his approach to his chair, hanging a left, and stepped through the sliding door leading to his ready room. Opting to stand rather than take the message at his desk, since it came from his flotilla command, Captain Raurrssatta activated the floor-mounted holoprojector, intending on having a conversation with Captain Terius's hologram on a 1:1 basis.

"Captajin?"

[Soto Terius]

Half a spiral arm away, Soto Terius set down the mug of lukewarm caf he'd been cradling, and extracted himself from his chair. A hand tugged down at the front of the vest that had bunched a little while he'd been sitting: he blamed the cut and fit of the garment, while his medical officer insisted the cut and fit of his body was more the problem.

A few steps was all it took to cross his modestly scaled office, and step onto a holo-platform of his own, a respectful distance from where the shimmering blue Cizerack was now projected.

Terius returned Raurrssatta's greeting with a curt nod, and a "Captain," of his own.

Formalities taken care of, the Corellian turned his attention to much more important matters; apparently, idle curiosity seemed to take precedent. "How's she holding up?" he asked. From one Captain to another, and one engineer to another, it was clear to which she he was referring.

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

"Stjill needs worrk jin the engjines."

Captain Raurrssatta flicked his ears, and it was more or less understood that was as good as it was going to get on account of his obsessive compulsion. Cirr admitted as much with a wry grin.

"But fast enough forr you. News frrom the flotjilla?"

Technically Novgorod was an asset of Captain Terius's flotilla and the command structure flowed in that direction. However, due to the frigate's speed and force multiplying effect at running sorties, she operated on a very long leash. Captain Raurrssatta nevertheless had to be prepared to give close support at short notice.

[Soto Terius]

"Commander Nadine from the Relentless finally gave birth to those twins she's been lugging around inside her," he answered, bringing the Captain up to speed with the latest scuttlebutt. "Rumour has it that the labour lived up to the ship's name."

Of course, that was hardly the kind of update that was being asked for; but Soto's mentor back during the Clone Wars had taught him that a good amount of innane trivia and chatter were important tools for any good Captain: they created a level of mild boredom that helped lull the crew into compliance, just to have a reason to escape.

"I have a mission for you," he said at last, after a lengthy pause. "Something requiring speed, stealth, and more than a little unorthadox flying." A ghost of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "It started sounding like your kind of mission the second it landed on my desk."

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

"Sounds ljike you pjicked the rrjight shjip, then."

Cirr nodded with confidence. He was starting to get a feel for his crew, and for the kind of can-do independence that Novgorod instilled in him. It was borne out of his days on the Layla, but he'd rather be flying fast and crazy at the tip of the spear than trundle ahead as another gun on the line, waiting to beat down and get beaten down in kind.

"What do you have?"

[Soto Terius]

Glancing down at a datapad briefly, Soto punched in a few commands that would transmit the mission files to the Novgorod, for the Captain to review at his leisure. In the meantime however, he offered the basics.

"The General has had us ramping up the pressure on the Imperials for weeks, throwing hit and run attacks at them from all angles. We haven't broken them, but we've shaken them loose." He tucked the datapad away, and clasped his hands behind his back. "Now it's time to punch a hole."

"What we need is a distraction: something to draw the Imperials out far enough for the flotilla to break through. We have our target; we need you hitting one of their listening posts. One ship alone won't be enough bait, though. Which begs the question -"

His mouth tugged into a hint of a knowing smile. "- how good is your ECW Officer, Captain?"

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

"What ECW Offjicerr?"

It was a rhetorical question. The dirty truth was that Mallin had been spread thin over comms and ECW. He did a good enough job, but ECW wasn't his speciality.

Cirr took a moment to flick through the mission particulars. It was a two pronged assignment consisting of masking their own presence and faking the presence of a false flotilla. That was something that would take more than manning a simple jamming apparatus.

"How much tjime untjil we go ljive? jI thjink jI know someone perrfect forr the task, but we need some tjime to get them."

[Soto Terius]

Soto adopted a grim half-frown, his fingers toying through the whiskers of his beard. The General gave him a broad mandate and a long leash with which to operate, so time scales were largely left up to his own discretion. That said, in the world of Intelligence, old news was often wrong news: leaving the situation too long could completely close their window, and unravel months of work.

"I can give you forty-eight hours, Captain," he said eventually; carefully. "And that's forty-eight real, Coruscant standard hours: not the needlessly dramatic forty-eight hours and a few minutes that you spacers like to play around with."

His hands clasped behind his back. "I'll hold off the assault, awaiting your signal. If we don't heard from you, we'll assume the mission is scrubbed: if you're just late, you'll end up in there on your own."

Despite the hologram, he still managed to translate his piercing gaze across a hundred lightyears. "Can you get it done?"

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Captain Raurrssatta nodded confidently.

"Of courrse. jI know ourr man. jIt won't take long to get my team togetherr."

He paused a moment, an ear flicking up as he added an afterthought.

"jI'll contact you jin one day. Raurrssatta out."

With that, the channel ended. The felinoid moved to his desk, opening a new channel, this one to another corner of the galaxy.

"Morrgan."

[Morgan Evanar]

Alliance communications were all encrypted, of course. They were piggybacked cleverly over the Empire's own equipment via the Holonet. What was once a highly restricted resource had been somewhat cracked back open, although Imperial Battlegroups would often black out the transmitters themselves after aggressive action against civilian populations sympathetic to the Rebellion. While the Rebels were organized primarily into small, fast response task forces, communications blackouts limited reaction times to the aformetioned crises. The Empire had become so thorough at disinformation that they would fake news reports from the planets in question for up to a month, depending on the locale's importance.

The concepts of hyperspace transmissions were grasped by few, but if Morgan could figure out how they worked, and if it was feasible to create more at moderate cost, it would be a huge boon to bypass the Empire completely. He sifted through data pads on hypercomm theory, and took notes wherever something concrete came up, and would theorycraft ways to impliment it with cheaper equipment.

"Morgan Evanar to the nearest comm room." Part of Morgan hoped it was Adia, but knew it wasn't. He took an engineering ladder shaft. It was faster than a lift, since he was only two decks from the comm. The Challenger's holocomm wasn't a retrofit, but a Clone Wars classic. It lacked the resolution of some of the newer holoencoders and emitters, but they were incredibly reliable.

"Cirr? Or should I say... Captain Raurrssatta?" He pronounced the Cizerack's last name with a bit of jest.

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Cirr grimaced like he'd been skewered.

"No need forr namecalljing, now."

That moniker was his albatross now. He knew Morgan was eating it up, so he let him have his moment of fun at his strange situation.

"How's ljife jin undjisclosed locatjions?"

Small talk as per usual. Cirr was at least curious how things were aboard the Wheel since the Coruscant mission and his...reassignment. He inwardly bristled against thinking about it in any other terms. Old wounds still hurt, no matter what was accomplished in inflicting them. He missed the men and women he was charged with protecting for so long.

[Morgan Evanar]

"We're fine. I miss talking shop, though." Morgan hadn't though about it very much since Cirr left, but Morgan had learned more about ship innards in the last two years from Cirr than most could learn in a lifetime. The burly Cizerack had a keen mind for the finer points of how a ship actually operated. Morgan was an information sponge with a natural intuition for the details of advanced theories and implementation/simulation. Also, there really wasn't anyone else who made a gym partner worth a damn since the 27th Marines had rotated out and took their Wookie contingent with them. He'd been authorized more food since his physical and managed to put on another solid 10 kilos of lean mass.

Cirr's face shifted, and Morgan knew he wanted more detail.

"Fizzkrik still won't listen about the shield buffers, Adia's... off somewhere. Serena is doing much better, but she still has some demons haunting her." The Jedi shrugged. "I think we're about as normal as we can be." There were some other details he wanted to add, but wasn't comfortable. Even if hyperspace data streams were nearly impossible to snoop on, the physical parts of the loop weren't.

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

"jI don't thjink you'd want to be a fly on the wall jin my shop, as of late."

Cirr gave a harried sigh.

"jI'll leave jit at the fact that my fjirrst love jis Correlljian desjign. Everrythjing else just takes offense when you beat jit wjith a hammerr."

He wasn't at all surprised about Fizzkrik either. They'd shared plenty of bitch sessions about luddites and how to live with them. Neither one of them were immune to their disasters. Again, beating things with a hammer should be a universal treatment.

"Anyway..."

He defused with a laugh.

"...jI djidn't just call to talk shop. jI don't get enough frree tjime forr jit anymorre."

Now he was the Captain again, much as he was loathe to admit.

"jI've got a wjild karree'thi of a mjissjion, the kjind you'd love. jI've alrready told jimporrtant men jI don't move my ass wjithout you on jit, so you'll forrgjive me jif jI've just put you on the spot."

He winked, fluttering his ears.

"They can only courrt-marrtjial one of us, afterr all."

[Morgan Evanar]

Cirr knew Morgan well enough to know that he wasn't a glory hound, and the only reason he ended up on the foolish adventures he had was because they were absolutely necessary. However, Cirr would only bring up something like this if it needed Morgan's combinations of expertise. Morgan was only a decent pilot by virtue of reflex and spatial depth, so that wasn't it. The Rogues were better. His frame didn't fit well in a starfighter anyway. It wasn't teleportation, because Cirr flat out didn't trust it. Not that Morgan blamed him. He knew how to do it, not how it worked. No, it was something technical.

"jI need you for the E-Warr con." Cirr stated flatly. The Jedi paused, but his eyes lit up slightly. ECW wasn't something he had any real experience with first hand, but it was all signal noise and reflections, which Morgan understood well. If Cirr gave him the manuals, Morgan would be able to read it in a few hours. On the fly, there weren't a lot of slicers who could match his input speed after his Jedi training.

"OK. Send me your specs and an equipment rundown. What about your current E-War officer?" Morgan asked.

"jI don't rreally jhave one. Malljin jis already sprread thjin on the comms." Cirr explained. "He can't handle both."

Morgan gave the Cizerack Captain a knowing nod.

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

The E-Warfare suite was one of those wink-and-a-nod gifts from Koensayr-Meorrrei that had been retrofitted into the Novgorod's existing compartment. Technically there wasn't anything illegal or military about quantum-band refractors. It was hobby kit stuff to most people. Of course when you put advanced logic like the kind a hyperdrive motivator could crunch into it, and boosted the band, and then combined it with things like spectrum threaders, you could do all kinds of creative and malicious things to comm spectrum. Like, produce exponentially populating moments of packets to bog down triangulators, making people wanting to target you with turbolasers and missiles need either a lot of luck, or a dozen ships actively headhunting.

Of course, that was how it was explained to him by a very-motivated salesperson in a conversation that did not exist. Mallin was just lucky to keep half of it plugged in on a good day. Nothing to fault him, he was just spread in every direction.

"jI'm trransmjittjing coorrdjinates forr a rrendezvous. jIf you ljike what you see, we'll be wajitjing therre."

[Morgan Evanar]

The small courier shuttle Morgan had borrowed sat in space at the rendezvous location Cirr had specified. He took advantage of the transit time to read the Koensayr-Meorrrei ECW suite whitepapers and documentation. Morgan read the user guide first, of course, but found it a little light on the fundamentals of how the device worked. Some of it was classified, and it shipped with some clumsy presets. Morgan had started work on more effective echoing and reflection, even to bring the illusion of a full-sized task force to bear. So long as they stayed out of visual range as long as it mattered, they could pull this off. Imperial sensor suites were well known. It wasn't like the eyeballs had much in the way of anything beyond a pair of blasters.

He was unsurprisingly early, so he went back to designing scenarios and keying up formulas for the different sensor packages that might be encountered.

Morgan looked up an hour later, when motion caught his peripheral vision.

"Holy shitsnacks." The Marauder class Corvette's Alliance colors were battle-scarred, but in good repair. Very much like a proud Trandoshan. Morgan waited a few seconds while he got over his fight-or-flight reaction, and hailed the Novgorod.

"Shuttle 813712-AV to Alliance ship, requesting permission to board."

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

"Permission granted, Shuttle 813712-AV. Approach the docking bay on the ventral hull. The Captain is expecting you."

Optimizing the use of their time, Novgorod also oriented about its axis, exposing the atmo field on its ventral hull that led to its docking bay.

Cirrsseeto wasted little time leaving the bridge, and took the lift down to the lower deck to meet his old friend. The bay was buzzing with activity, clearing a few cargo pallets to provide the precious square meterage necessary to accomodate the shuttle in the cramped compartment.

[Morgan Evanar]

There wasn't much room for error, but Morgan was good at this sort of gravity oriented piloting. It was more like flying a speeder than a star fighter. He put the small shuttle effortlessly amidst the pallets, but had to climb one to leave the shuttle properly.

"Cirr!" Morgan said when he spotted the fellinoid. He swung is his long legs over the palletalized boxes, and hit the ground. Morgan embraced the Cizerack in a friendly hug, and clapped him on the back.

"So this is your new tub, eh?"

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Morgan gave as good as Cirr did, so it was great to reciprocate as he rarely got the chance. He also didn't call him Captain, which was a much needed breath of fresh air.

"Only thjing new about thjis gjirrl jis the faceljift."

He laughed and shrugged.

"One helluva faceljift though. Rruns tjight enough forr me, so jI'd put herr agajinst any shjip jin the Alljiance jin herr wejight class."

The walked together toward the utility lift that would carry them to the bridge.

"Stjill not used to somethjing thjis...bjig though. Compljicates thjings wjith almost two hundrred people lookjing to you and expectjing you to know what you'rre dojing."

It felt nice to confide, even if it was a fleeting confessional inside an elevator.

"A few months ago jI was stjill rrepajirrjing engjines forr a trrade."

[Morgan Evanar]

Morgan nodded. "Trading freedom for responsibility and power is always awkward." Hell, they'd done some foolish, straight out of a holo adventure things together.

When the bridge doors opened, only a Cathar ensign paused saluted. Cirr gave a simple nod, and she continued past. The rest of the bridge crew was busy with mission preparations, save for one empty seat, next to the communications console. When Cirr and Morgan moved closer, Morgan immediately recognized the layout of the displays and controls.

It was the E-War console. Full spectrum color displays that could be set to accommodate multiple different vision spectrum for multiple species operation. There were control clusters for grouped functions, with hold button toggles, plus a full Basic keyboard and macro buttons. It was the top of the line model, as Morgan had learned through the documentation. Cirr had sent him a general overview, but there were many details that were lacking.

"Can you give me a more detailed briefing?"