. . . . .

Memorandum to all Servicemen on Active Duty

Matters of Policy : The Tarkin Doctrine

With the death of the Emperor at the Battle of Endor, the Galatic Empire is stretched to the limits of its resources and challenged like never before. Across hundred of sectors, systems once thought to be secure are now facing the danger of open revolt. The Empire’s previous heavy-handed tactics in dealing with the myriad insurgencies, as manifested in the Tarkin Doctrine, has proved to be impractical and detrimental to our efforts of keeping order, ensuring peace and maintaining stability. Today, revisionist policy studies are acknowledging the fact that unilateral actions designed to inspire fear into our citizens, to coerce them into believing that going against our glorious Empire is suicidal, are counter-productive to our efforts, not to mention immoral. Fear might engender fear, but fear can also provoke backlashes which we are ill-afforded in these times of crisis.

Such policies will also affect you, the Stormtroopers and TIE Pilots of our glorious military, from functioning optimally as fighting men. Recent studies by the Psychiatric Department of the Imperial Navy Medical Corps has unearthed research findings that psychological casualties take just as heavy a toll on a unit’s fighting capability as physical ones.

With that in mind, presented here is a written account of Lieutenant Thersak Bacina, identification number CX-12840V, an officer who served in the Imperial Security Bureau as a field agent with the Investigations Department. The Lieutenant details, in a narrative format, the course of action undertaken by High Command when a Rebel Alliance  operative was captured in an unnamed backwater planet in an Outer Rim system. This account was written shortly after the Battle of Yavin. Included also is an appendix containing the original text of Imperial Communiqué #001044.92v, the basis of the Tarkin Doctrine.

This account serves as a reminder to all members serving the Vast Empire that we are honour-bound by our military code to do what is righteous and correct the misguided policies that have unfortunately been enacted in recent years. We are honour-bound to protect our citizens.

Part I

“I cannot answer that question,” he repeated again, monotonously.

I had respect for the man, bounded to the chair before me. He was one tough bastard.

Blood was trickling slowly down from his broken lips, forming bright crimson specks when he coughed and blew them over the dusty-brown utility coveralls he was clad in.

I stared into his eyes coldly; making sure the contact was not broken. That was important, the contact. The pupils of one’s eyes can hope to transmit messages what actions do not. I willed mine to impress upon him that he had reason to fear much worst to come, if he failed to cooperate. As of then, he was still not breaking.

I looked up and nodded at the Stormtrooper behind him, a menacing shadow. The man in white armour raised his gauntleted hand in a deliberate manner and struck it hard across the back of the captive’s head. The impact of the blow hit with a sickening thud. More blood spluttered. A little red drop landed on the toe of my right boot. Another drop endeavoured to stain a loose bootlace. I looked down on these tiny drops with disdain.

Interrogation could be messy work.

“Name, rank and unit,” I asked again, leaning down close to him, as if to whisper.

Much of interrogation, I admit, was theatrics. All about screwing the mind.

“I cannot answer that question.”

Again, that answer.

Another blow rammed down on his face. This time, it was to his mouth, and by the garbled scream and wheezing that was elicited, I reckoned that a few teeth were loosened.

Every single action in my little interrogation cell was not random but designed in a calculative manner. Fear of force was a greater weapon than force itself. Fear might sharpen reflexes, granting hyper-clarity in life and death scenarios. But it also clouds a man’s judgment when he is under extreme duress, weakening his will, his beliefs, his mental constituency.

“Are there any other agents? How developed is your network? What are the names of the tribal chiefs and villagers who agreed to co-operate with you?” I asked in rapid-fire. “I need these questions answered, or people will start dying.”

That got him. I could see his lips were about to move, but there was a slight intake of breath, a subtle sign of hesitation. A sign of weakness. Denial was no longer an option for him – he had been caught stuffing an arms cache with a stash of thermal detonators, with too much compromising information on a few datapads, and suspicious transmission addresses on his comlink. The fact he was a local Rebel Alliance operative recruited to create a terrorist cell on this planet was beyond doubt. That was clearer than a pure solitaire diamond held up to a light.

My job was to find out how well he carried his task before a patrol had caught him red-handed in the act. The relevant authorities were working on a tip-off. The story was that the man was weak enough to pay the local whore a visit. Fortunately, she was on our payroll to help look out for interesting subject matter, in the event a client was stupid enough to disclose such information in a fit of braggadocio. They always do, so it turned out to be a wise move for us.

“I..” he started, unsure.

“Yes?” I struggled to control my pace of breathing.

Maybe we were getting somewhere at last.

His head rolled groggily from shoulder to shoulder. Blood caked his face, and he was only staring out of one good eye. The other was beaten and bruised, and it swelled till the opening was reduced to a mere slit. It defiled the captive’s otherwise handsome features; he had dark hair, dark eyes and high cheekbones.

The air hung still. Then he raised his head, defiance still emanating from his one good eye.

“I cannot answer that question,” came the answer at last. This time it was whispered, almost unwilling, as if he acknowledged that saying that phrase would result in yet more terrible consequences.

I sighed. Poor wretch.

I wheeled on my heels and left the room, having given up for now, just as the two Stormtrooper guards poured thinner down the back of his shirt and struck a flame, leaving him screaming in horror that he was being burnt alive.

It was just a scare tactic. I could not let him be disposed of too soon. Nevertheless, the guards made sure much of his spine was an unsightly black before they kicked him over on the back and stamped on him with studded boots to put out the fire licking his body.

I entered the adjacent room where, in a scene reminiscent of police investigations from Coruscanti holodramas, my commanding officer was witnessing how the interrogation was coming along behind the security of a plexi-glass screen that only appeared to the suspect as a mirror.

“Well?” said Major Simunic.

“Nothing yet,” I answered, embarrassed.

Simunic was an old hand in this game. He was tall and dark-haired, approaching middle age. The tinges of grey on his hair only accentuated his image as a fine, respectable gentleman. The immaculate white duty tunic of our service branch completed the image. Gentlemanly, however, he was certainly not. He had a reputation for being exceedingly ruthless and brutal, a trait that won you respect within the ranks of the Imperial Security Bureau.

“Don’t worry,” he muttered. “We’ll beat it out of him yet.”

I nodded my head in the polite manner as expected of junior officers.



Two days later, Simunic’s foresight was borne out. The man had confessed to everything. His name was Zlatan, Hamovich Zlatan, and all the details of his little operations were revealed. Such fine matter included the promised payment due to him, his recruiter, his fellow agents (with their associated aliases and expected alibis), safehouses, other hidden arms caches, security passwords and other minor intricacies. A finely crafted plot, indeed.

Of course, by the time he finally decided he had had enough of the game, the captive was a physical wreck. Nails had been ripped off. Several digits on his hands were missing so that his hands resembled more of crude, bloody stumps. A collarbone was broken. Hair had been singed off. Skin had been dexterously sliced off to reveal pink flesh and muscle. His shins had been played havoc so roughly that at places, the white of bone was showing. He had suffered the indignity of being urinated on by his guards. Excrement had been smeared on his face and rubbed into his eyes.

But I did not care for him. I was elated. I got my job done, did I not?

“Well, sir, looks like we have everything we need,” I said to Simunic, tilting my head at the captive’s direction.

He did not reply. He let the seconds pass idly by him, as if lost in capturing some fleeting thoughts. We were back in the anteroom of the interrogation cell. More seconds of deliberation passed before he finally stirred, as if woken from a deep slumber.

“The man has family, am I correct?”

“Him, sir? Yes, sir, I believe so.. in the village,” I answered, referring of course to the half-dead man that Zlatan was at this stage. I added on helpfully, eager to please him with my investigative comprehensiveness, “A child; a young daughter. His wife died, likely of pneumonia, three years ago, according to the dossier.”

“Mhmm,” he affirmed.

I waited for him to express whatever it was he wanted to say.

Clearly, there was a delicate issue to consider.

“Lieutenant, it’s not the end yet.”

“Sir?” I was puzzled, intrigued. We had all we needed, did we not? It was a closed case, a stamped file to be put away into a drawer somewhere.

Simunic turned to look me directly in the eye, as if appraising me. My breath was caught by his stare. He had grey eyes, but they seemed lightless. All that existed in those wells was a coldness, icy and eerie.

He took a half-step forward and leaned towards me, slightly bending at the waist. He whispered the plan he had in store for Zlatan and his daughter, and the village of his origins.

Despite myself, I shuddered and mentally blanched when Simunic explained what was to be done next. Teardrops of sweat dripped from my brow. These little wet drops sounded like echoes to me when they hit the cool durasteel of the floor we stood on.

“But sir,” I hesitated.

“Is there a problem, Lieutenant?” he asked, an eyebrow raised, as if in challenge.

I coughed weakly. “I am sorry, sir. It is just that..”

“Just what, young man?”

I fumbled for words and muttered something feeble.

“I don’t see how exactly that would be productive,” I finally choked out.

“Tarkin might be dead, Lieutenant. But the great man and his ideas must not be forgotten,” came the stern reprimand from Simunic. “They must not perish with him.”

Of course. Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin. He had died with the destruction of the Death Star at Yavin a month ago. I had admired the man and had not been ashamed to admit that I had vehemently approved of his style of governance. It had promised order, the key tenet in my life, in the life of any military officer. A galaxy disentangled from chaos was what I envisioned when I embraced his ideas.

But now, Simunic was asking, no, ordering, me to put my belief to the test with an act that he assured me was quintessentially Tarkinesque.

He left me in the room, as if granting me the luxury of gathering my strength. I needed it for the execution of the coming deed ahead. The blood seemed to have left my legs.

But orders were orders.

Were they not?



I cursed as my hand sub-consciously swept up to swat away the marauding advances of those irritating sand-flies. Beneath me, the loud humming of the commandeered civilian cargo skiff continued incessantly as we drove into the heart of Zlatan’s village. The repulsorlift engines were gunning at full throttle and the vehicle kicked up waves of dust. The purpose was to generate as much noise as mechanically possible so as to forewarn the villagers of our impending arrival. Curiosity will do the rest and naturally draw them out.

I turned back to have a look at my fellow passengers, from my position at the helm of the skiff. There was Zlatan, bounded, on his knees, still a bloody mess but alive, just. We needed him for the Simunic’s special staged demonstration ahead. I also had a squad of Stormtroopers onboard, tasked with a unique mission. The Stormtroopers, I was told, were among the last of the Jango Fett clones. I wondered if being organic war machines, little more than man-man battle droids, made them more suitable, more predisposed perhaps, for what lay ahead.

What lay ahead..

I swallowed what little saliva still wallowing in my dry throat. I realized then that my right hand, gloved, was trembling. I gripped the rails of the skiff tighter, hoping to mask the unsteadiness broiling in me from the squad of Stormtroopers. And Zlatan.

Restlessly, I threw another glance at him. His eyes appeared to be glazed over, like those of a corpse. The medics had struggled to keep him alive for Simunic’s purposes. The latter himself, by matter of course, was not accompanying us. Such dirty work was below that of a field grade officer, and I, as a junior one, had the honour of being delegated to such petty tasks.

I would have paid any amount of credits then for a the physical and emotional distance enjoyed by privileged ranking men like Simunic.

The engines suddenly halted. We were there. So lost I was in my nauseous thoughts that I failed to realize the fact. The dust clouds that had announced our arrival in grand fashion had achieved their purpose; the village square was a throng of people of the young and aged, the healthy and the infirmed. Eyes stared curiously at us. Gasps could be heard when those eyes invariably found poor Zlatan, their fellow villager, with cuffs and thick ropes binding him, as if he was some war trophy. Parents reined in their broods. Men grew still and silent. Tribal elders spat out the various stimulant-laced roots they had been chewing on. The tense atmosphere was unbearably stifling, threatening to choke me like the vice of a Force-applied grip of a Sith Lord. I felt bile rising.

I had been afraid that my voice would be a croak, but I surprised even myself.

“Find the girl,” I ordered, fearing that it came out terse, or worse, wavering.

But the order I gave came out smoothly, as if I had rehearsed it a thousand times. The squad of nine troopers dutifully filed out and swam into the crowd, searching. I heard indignant cries from people as they were pushed aside roughly, but these barely registered with me.

Eternity passed before the squad leader returned, parting the crowd with his large frame.

He led a little girl of about thirteen in front of him, firm hands forcefully guiding a small pair of trembling shoulders.

Oh, she broke my heart!

She was a beautiful child. Large, doleful eyes with brown pupils. Wavy hair flopped messily over her forehead in the delightful unkempt manner of children raised on farmsteads. But those eyes, where once they must have shone with joy, carried nothing but bewilderment then, and even that soon turned to horror when she was confronted with the brutal fact that the commotion we had engendered was centred on her father. Her father.

“Papa!!” she screamed, rushing forward. But the burly Stormtrooper sergeant’s arm swept up in front of her and restrained her rush.

“Papa! Papa! Papa!” she screamed hysterically.

In her panic, her vocabulary seemed to be limited to that sole word. Zlatan stirred, but was too weak to call out back to her. Murmurs of disquiet rippled through the crowd.

“Papa!”

I wanted to shut her up and shut her out. Shut her out completely. The girl and her screaming, the crowd, the heat, everything.

“Get the shovel,” said a voice in a forceful manner.

A voice? I looked around, confused. Then I realized it was from me. It could not be.

“Papa!”

Shut up.

“Papa!”

Shut the FUCK up.

A vibro-shovel was thrown from the skiff into the hands of one of the troopers. The soldier who caught it turned to me, expectantly.

“Dig,” I commanded.

He began excavating a pit with his small entrenching tool. I cursed his rate of work out loud and screamed at him in my mind to quicken the pace. Small clumps of brown dirt formed a periphery around the small pit he was creating.

Eternity passed before the hole was deep enough. It was somewhere between four and five feet in depth.

“Get her in.”

She screamed and punched as two Stormtroopers grabbed her under the arms, lifted her up and tried to force her into the hole. Her legs spread apart and her feet stubbornly pushed away from the small pit. She lashed out furiously but fruitlessly, kicking against the groin plates of her men who handled her. The murmuring of the crowd grew louder. There was anger at the callous treatment of the child.

“Papa! Papa! What are they doing to me?!” she sobbed, struggling under the grip.

The lips of her father’s mouth moved but no words were vocalized, only a muffled groan as he saw his daughter being lowered down against her will. When her feet touched the base of the hole, she tried to claw her way back out, but my men pushed down on her shoulders, ensuring that her arms were kept locked to her sides despite her struggling.

Then, without a word of command from me, the trooper with the vibro-shovel began throwing dirt at her. No, not at her. At the hole. He was filling it up again. With her inside it. I wanted to turn away, but sheer morbid horror kept my eyes fixated on the scene. Her arms flailed wildly as it dawned on her that she might be buried alive. But no, a live burial was not what I had been ordered to oversee. We had come to the village for something else. It was all planned, staged, like a day out on the firing range for blaster practice. The details were specific and precise, like any military operation. Simunic was good with that, the details.

A demonstration. A public demonstration. That was what it was supposed to be.

It was all part of the plan, a little cog turning for higher purposes to work.

Higher purposes. Order out of chaos. Peace and freedom from war. The preservation of stability. The preservation of the New Order. Justice for crimes against the states.

That was what I signed up for, was it not?

But what crimes against the state had this little girl committed?

A lifeless and mechanical voice, probably one that a psychiatrist would airily describe as a mental embodiment of a defence mechanism, suddenly switched on in my head. Ours was not to reason why but to do and die. Ours was not to reason why but to do and die. Ours was to not reason why but to do and die.

Hers was not to reason why but to die.

The dirt slowly went up to her neck. The crying would not stop. She could now only flail her head helplessly from side to side, her high-pitched sobbing turning into one long, hysterical scream. A stench rose – the poor little lady had, in sheer terror, defecated. Her bowels had loosened from fear. Then, the crowd snapped and surged forward, intent on liberating her from her hole. But a ring of blasters, manned by the Stormtrooper squad, quickly formed, as if it was a tactical exercise. That kept the crowd at bay, cowing it. But not the entirety.

A small boy, aged no more than ten, darted forward, slipping under the arms of one trooper. He did not go more than five steps when he was shot, dead. The settings were not set to stun. Only a child, innocent in his bravery, naïve to danger, could have tried to play the hero like that.

A dead boy ten feet away from me. A young teenage girl, buried in a hole up to her neck, screaming, the spectacle of it set before the bowed figure of her own father. This is what it had come to. I was standing still, motionless. The horror of it was too surreal for me.

“Sir?”

“What?” I responded, a mechanical reaction.

“Permission to proceed, sir.”

A pause. What was I supposed to say again? At that point in time? It was all planned, the details of it gone over at headquarters. I knew the line I had to say next. I knew exactly was what about to unfold.

A moment’s hesitation. Only a moment; they trained me too well to refuse orders from up above.

“Carry on, Sergeant.”

The vibro-shovel was raised, high, the executioner recalling reserves of kinetic energy to ensure gravity had all the facilitation it needed.

Then it hammered down on the little girl’s skull. I watched it falling. The motion seemed excruciatingly slow. Time had grinded to a crawl. Then the blade connected with the skull. A last scream from the girl, as she saw it coming down between her eyes, was cut short, dying in her throat.

Blood and hair, congealed in a sticky paste, clung to the shovel’s blade as it was retracted upwards from the swing. Her screaming had stopped, at last. But all around, women dropped to their hands and knees, moaning. Grown men wept. I was aware of my surroundings, but only barely.

Another swing down. The cranium was fractured – I heard the bone breaking this time.

Then the final effort. A last sickening thud saw clumps of grey brain matter hanging off the edge of the shovel.

I turned my fixated stare over to Zlatan. The only sign to show he was conscious of the butchering of his daughter was that he was now bent over instead of sitting upright. With his knees on the dirt and his forehead kissing the ground too, he looked like he was in obeisance, worshipping whatever deity he prayed to. But he would die. We were sure of that – that much the medics promised. He would linger on for a few hours, the last painful scenes of his life tormenting him before blood loss claimed him. No prayers would avail.

Somehow, I stirred and staggered backwards, attempting to regain my senses. I was lost, caught up in it all. But I knew that to my men, and to the crowd, I was a picture of calm. Officers were drilled to conceal their emotions, to display sang froid no matter what the scenario. That was not instinct – that was training.

Raising an arm, I signaled for the squad to return to the skiff and we withdrew, leaving the crowd, stunned to silence, Zlatan in his incongruous posture, the dead little boy, and the girl in the hole, buried up to her neck, her head gaping open. The cavity of her skull was laid bare for all to witness.

We withdrew and left them all behind.

All for a higher purpose. Order out of chaos. Peace and freedom from war. The preservation of stability. The preservation of the New Order. Justice for crimes against the states.

An example to be remembered.

Lieutenant Therdsak Bacina, the author of this account, was found killed by a blaster shot to the mouth shortly after this narrative was submitted to the Re-Education Department of COMPNOR for distribution to the fleet. The post-mortem investigation concluded that the Lieutenant had committed suicide.

Quote:Appendix A : The Tarkin Doctrine Communique

To: His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Palpatine
From: Governor Tarkin, Seswenna Sector, Eriadu
Regarding: Increasing the security of the Empire

Your Majesty:
It has recently come to my attention that what had previously been the quiet grumbling of malcontents on backwater worlds has become dissidence in more civilized systems. Your Majesty will forgive me if I am repeating foundless rumors, but I have heard there is even armed defiance in some sectors.

Coupled with increased resistance to your plans from hot-headed young Senators, this situation has given me pause to think about our long term security arrangements. I myself have been frustrated chasing pirate bands in my sector, only to have them leap deep into a neighboring sector where my forces cannot follow without running into conflict with another Moff. If the scattered armed resistance should become organized, it will doubtless follow the example of its criminal brethen. Granting any rebel group the advantage of elusiveness is foolhardy at best. At worst, it could lead to our destruction.

Even the excellent pace with which His Majesty is increasing the size of the Imperial Fleet can scarcely hope to provide all-encompassing security should a significant number of planets decide to defy your New Order. We are years—perhaps decades—away from a force vast enough to secure every system and every world simultaneously.

Therefore, I present the following recommendations for your consideration:

To provide a swift, systematic response to rebellion as it appears and before it has time to entrench, I suggest the formation of Oversectors—sectors consisting of systems in which rebellion is newly born, or systems which maintain frequent contact with systems in chronic unrest. These Oversectors would be formed without regard to current sector boundaries. With the freedom to cross outdated political borders, Oversector forces would be able to respond to threats quickly, while they are still small and manageable.

Liquidating a dozen small threats is easier than rooting out one well-established center of defiance. As an Oversector is created only across problem sectors, they must be given a greater quantity of forces than a normal sector. Three Sector Groups should suffice.

Command of an Oversector should be given to a single individual who reports directly to His Majesty. This will bypass any delays caused by political opportunnism in your advisors.

Cannibalize existing holonet transceivers, modify them, and put them in the flagship of every Sector Group in an Oversector command. Place similar facilities within His Majesty's command ship and within the Royal Palaces of Imperial City. This will enable forces to respond to threats almost as quickly as they are reported. Imperial forces will be able to coordinate to a degree impossible among an enemy whose fastest means of communication is an ever changing rendezvous point somewhere in the galaxy.

Rule through the fear of force rather than through force itself. If we use our strength wisely, we shall cow thousands of worlds with the example of a select few. These examples would need to be highly visible worlds, whose punishment would be further revealed through our control of information via the hyper media.

Your Majesty, it has long been my contention that your New Order needs one undeniable and overwhelming symbol to impress and, yes, frighten the masses. The average citizen has no grasp of numbers nor a head for calculation. I maintain that the effectiveness of the Star Destroyer stems from not only its massive firepower, but from its size. When citizens look at a Star Destroyer and then compare it to the craft which might be mustered to attack it, they have a tendency to dismiss such a notion as suicidal rather than approach the problem tactically.

This natural state can be exploited to a far greater degree, as the average citizen deals in symbols, not rational analysis. If we present the galaxy with a weapon so powerful, so immense as to defy all conceivable opposition against it, a weapon invulnerable and invincible in battle, then that weapon shall become the symbol of the Empire. We need only a handful, perhaps as few as one, of these weapons to subjugate a thousand thousand worlds. It must have force enough to dispatch an entire system, power enough to shatter planets. The fear such a weapon will inspire will be great enough for you to rule the galaxy unchallenged. What do you need with the Senate when you can give direct control of territories to your hand-picked regional governors? Sweep away the last remnants of the Old Republic and let fear keep the local systems in line—fear of our ultimate weapon.

I am ready to begin work to implement these steps at your word.

OOC:

Dedicated to the memory of Aisho Ibrahim Dhuhulow, an innocent Somalian girl of thirteen, stoned to death while buried up to her neck. All because she reported to the authorities that she had suffered rape at the hands of three men.

The text of the appendix is not an original creation by me and has been taken off canonical sources.