Full title: "Now that's a real shame when folks be throwin' away a perfectly good white boy like that."

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"Boss, you need to get over here," said the voice message.

Coming from Paler, that meant something of interest. Fury had only landed on the Etchik facility the evening before. He had been spending too much time away from the business and was losing track of operations.  With the Corps on stand down, it was a good time to re-evaluate what Imperial Center was doing. Instead, he now had to head down to the scrapyard and find Paler.

An hour later he was landing on the frozen surface of Etchik.  All Imperial Center major operations took place in orbit on the shipyards, factories, and facilities.  Down here were the weapon test sites and the salvage operation. 

Early on it it's existence, Imperial Center needed quick capital and went into the salvage business.  It was still a marginally lucrative business with all the pirate attacks in this region of space. The recent increase in outright warfare with Thrawn coming on the scene hadn't hurt either. In any case, if his head slicer was down here looking at some broken hull, he must have found something that was beyond the usual wire-pulling and armor plate recovery jobs normally done here.

Walking through the yard in his armored spacesuit, Fury got that queasy feeling again.  Etchik had virtually no orbital spin. Combine that with a very low gravity and you got weird results. His boots kept him mostly adhered to the surface as he had magnetic soles and walked on the recycled steel deckplates that covered the routes between the parts stacks.  Said stacks, meanwhile, just sort of floated in mid-air. This was particularly freaky when walking past a collection of Trade Fed battle droid heads or past a jumble of TIE cockpits juggling against each other slowly. Every so often one would bounce against the particle field that kept the parts corralled and blue-green sparks would ripple up the side of the energy wall.

The galaxy was a messed up place and his own personal junkyard just brought it home. Eventually he found a ground scooter and moved out into the ship graveyard.  Paler had given him the coordinates for where he was working and he headed out to the location. Once there he found a team disassembling a TIE Lone Scout that had been severely damaged, presumably by a meteor shower. Nearby was a New Republic Ferret, one of their newest craft. It was a droid-piloted version of the Prowler recon vessel, which usually autodestructed when confronted with potential capture situations.  The fact that it was mostly intact was more than a bit odd.

"Okay, how the heck did we capture a flying bomb?"

Paler looked up from dissecting the recon ship. The slicer had been disconnecting any discernible power sources from the central processor housing. "Oh, hey boss. We'll get to that in a minute. Come over here to the scout ship."  Coming out from the ship's housing, he barked at a couple ground techs slouching next to a fully loaded hovercart.  "Hey! That's a live, fully loaded CM-5 missile assembly slaved to this ship's droid brain. It's next order is to detonate those warheads. Kindly get it back to the workshop with the other assembly before we...all...blow...up!" Paler yelled.

The techs immediately got their cargo moving.

"Sorry boss. This is a new ship class for me so I really don't know if I terminated all the brain's communications."

Fury laughed. "Paler, never apologize for protecting me from an explosion. What do you have for me?"

"First thing is this craft. It hasn't received any of the upgrade kits since at least the Endor debacle. He's likely one of those waypoint outposts Palpatine seeded out in this part of the galaxy. Weird thing is that, though he hasn't been in contact with recent events, he wasn't too far into the Unknown Regions or anything.

"The salvage team said they picked up a transponder signal while doing a scan slightly Coreward of Rakata Prime.  Not too far off our normal salvage area, but honestly I don't believe them. I think they were freelancing way off the reservation but that's not too huge a deal right now. I've put a note into Internal Audit to track them. Either way, they said they recovered this craft drifting in the middle of nowhere. It is pretty obvious the ship flew into a meteor shower. The pilot looks to have died years ago and its a miracle no one found him. I haven't deciphered the astrogation but the main computer died at least a year ago so the path the ship took is up for grabs. Unfortunate, but older ships like this don't have particle shields able to handle it and the pilot was probably asleep when it happened. If we had really known where he was found, we might find what he was onto, though I think I know." Paler handed over a datachip to Fury. "I copied this off of a chip the pilot had in a courier pouch."

"It is military encoded on an old Imperial command algorithm. I sliced it but didn't read much of it, but got the general gist. Sorry.  Basically, someone found a hidden New Republic shipyard and a grip of resource centers and was sending this scout in from the cold to have them neutralized. Apparently the attack never happened though I doubt he was the only courier sent. I have some ideas of why and when you see where they are located, I bet you will too. Either way, I will send my analysis later."

"Hmmm," mumbled Fury.  "So I'm not here for store business after all?" Paler shook his head. "Alright, what about the Ferret?"

"That one is fun and it is why I think the salvage crew could be let off the hook. You know we've been wanting one of these for awhile. We've captured and reverse-engineered a Prowler, but have never gotten one of these babies to look at the droid brain. I think we need to get this thing up to some actual droid engineers. If nothing else, the code will make our droid fighters a magnitude of times smarter in the battlefield. Yeah, it's that good.

"Short story is that on the same pickup that got the salvage team the TIE Scout, this Ferret just drifts on by. They'd have never seen it without some engine damage it picked up, maybe from a nearby asteroid field. They wouldn't say but at least this ship's astrogation logs are going to tell me where they were when the ship got captured.  In any event, the crew did the right thing and hit the craft with a whole spread of ion shots. The ship didn't have a chance to self-destruct."

"Any significance to the ship being in that area?"

Paler shrugged. "I'm hoping the brain will help me out."

"Alright, what about the pilot? Who was he and were was he based?"

"Once again, we won't know until we check the relevant databases. But I haven't submitted the request. I think you really need to read that file and then decide if you want to make the call."

Fury slowly nodded. "Well, keep the remains safe and in a good place. Hopefully this isn't as bad as you think."

Paler grimaced, "How often am I wrong?"

Fury turned and looked at his chief slicer, "In cases like this, not often."
 
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PRF/GG Fury/VEA/TADATH/VE [MoHx2][SCPx2][PoC][SotE:HC][SotE:VEA][SCP][MSM][IOC]
Prefect - Stormtrooper Corps
Administrator - Imperial Center

Fury woke up at his deck with a massive crick in his neck. He looked up. He had taped up flimsiplast all over his office and was trying to remember where the hell he had left his train of thought when he realized someone was trying to buzz him.

He keyed in his com code and video sprang up at his desk. "You okay sir?" asked the technician on the screen.

"Yeah, just getting up. No problem. Go on." he said, seeing the tech about to go into apologize-to-the-corporate-head mode.

"Well sir, we did some analysis on the Lone Scout that got recovered and it looks as it did not malfunction due to a meteor shower or comet trail collision.  There were definite signs that it had been hit by ion cannon and then possibly tractor beamed into another craft and deposited where it could be damaged or, more likely, destroyed 'accidentally'. I think it is a miracle we even recovered this craft."

"Well, that adds more fuel to the fire of a conspiracy. Thanks much and get those results to me."

Fury ordered some caf and got to checking his messages. Paler had sent in a note concerning the potential recipients of the attack orders. He apparently had to hack a remote Holonet satellite to access its archives; something he must have enjoyed doing.

In the end, it was a smoking gun.  Fury was looking at a long list of Moffs and Admirals who should have seen the orders and never did. There were an additional nine craft that were to deliver the news. None of them were ever seen again. Fury would personally contact each pilot's family before this whole affair was over.

Murder. Conspiracy. Treasonous dealings with enemies of the Empire. All at the behest of the supposedly morally pure Grand Admiral.

And someone would have to put this to rights. There were dark and busy days ahead for the Vast Empire.
 
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PRF/GG Fury/VEA/TADATH/VE [MoHx2][SCPx2][PoC][SotE:HC][SotE:VEA][SCP][MSM][IOC]
Prefect - Stormtrooper Corps
Administrator - Imperial Center

Fury was playing admiral. Well, kinda.

The two smaller destroyers of the new Imperial Center fleet were on their shakedown cruises, along with most of their escort craft. The heavy missile frigates were still being fitted with their primary weaponry and the main destroyer was not likely going to be part of the fleet prior to the campaign.

The two CD-710 destroyers, the Carl Castanaveras and the Roland Deschains were quite likely the best destroyer design he had seen, even including Rothana and Kuat designs. They were very compact and mean ships, with a hefty starfighter contingent, in this case a mix of Preybirds and Morningstar-Ds. Flanking were the CC-6400 heavy frigates Richter, Havel, and Bent along with the six modified Victory-II frigates.

The small fleet was designated Anti-Piracy Task Force 1, which would remain until the still-in-planning mission was completed.  Fury had come along just to get away from the office, both of them, as the fleet headed on a small hyperspace jump to the Eluria system, one of those forgotten Unknown Territory planets with a sordid history and lots of skeletons. Perfect place to put an Imperial Center redoubt.

In point of fact, this is where the salvage team had taken the jewel of the Corellian shipyard wreckage, a mostly intact deepdock facility. Unfortunately, also with skeletons and sordid history intact.

That said, once complete, they could refit an entire fleet at just this facility. Spoils of war and all that.

Meanwhile, Paler kept digging and kept tying Thrawn to New Republic elements that wanted to knock humans off the top of the hierarchy there. It seems Bothans were pulling the strings there, something that - if developed - could really sabotage the Alliance of Free Planets.

Also, while they had still not found the location of the hidden New Republic shipyard, they knew who they might interrogate to get that information. It was time to put the Army on the case.
 
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PRF/GG Fury/VEA/TADATH/VE [MoHx2][SCPx2][PoC][SotE:HC][SotE:VEA][SCP][MSM][IOC]
Prefect - Stormtrooper Corps
Administrator - Imperial Center