We had to stay a little longer at headquarters—Moff Trachta needed to finish his meeting first, and only then was he finally free. We were walking down the corridor toward the hangar when I decided to start a conversation.
"Sir, may I ask a question?"
"Go ahead, General. I can even guess what you want to ask. Why am I going with you instead of staying at headquarters, as my position requires?"
"Yes, that's exactly what I was wondering."
"The answer is quite simple, General Vikt. Unfortunately, there's a widespread practice among officers to downplay their failures or, conversely, to exaggerate their successes. That undermines the reliability of the information reaching headquarters, and I lose sight of the big picture. And that's critical. So I often make these kinds of 'visits' to assess the situation for myself. It's quite useful—it keeps my subordinates on their toes."
The Moff smiled faintly. "Although there is another reason. I'm… bored."
"Bureaucracy?" I asked, half rhetorically. Trachta simply nodded.
"That's right. You can't imagine how much poodoo I have to deal with every day. Your scale is smaller. And even though I trained as an analytical officer, I was trained for the field—not as a desk jockey."
"Well, yes. I have a Legion, and you have the Sector Army. However, I don't deal with paperwork," I said, not without a hint of pride.
Trachta raised an eyebrow in surprise.
"How so?"
"I found a smart officer. She takes care of all that."
"Really? Lucky you…"
As we talked, we reached the hangar, from where we were taken straight to the Akagi's gangway. As soon as we were on board, we hurried up to the ship's bridge.
Yes, it would have been worth bringing a holocamera to capture the officers' expressions. Okay, Li Noriega—she just nodded silently and continued typing something into the tactical table's terminal, but the rest were clearly taken aback when a full-fledged Moff followed me onto the bridge. Well, yeah, understandable—officials of that rank were anything but commonplace. Blame, on the other hand, didn't seem to care in the slightest, judging by his reaction. Well, for him, I was the boss, a Jedi, and the Moff was just another secondary figure.
Still, we too managed to surprise Moff a little. When Trachta noticed Tinman calmly discussing something with Christen Mirro, the Moff's hand twitched toward his blaster holster. He quickly came to his senses, however, realizing that everything was in order.
The other officers—Cerri, O'Connor, and Mirro—recovered just as quickly and introduced themselves. The mutual courtesies took about five minutes, after which we plunged into a working rhythm. During a brief meeting, I outlined the essence of the mission to the officers and crew. While Blame and I discussed possible courses of action, Lichtendal and Sumeragi spoke with Trachta.
"Lichtendal, how's the course setting?"
"All set, sir."
"Then let's go," I ordered.
"How long will it take to reach Kidiet Olgo?" Trachta asked.
"Our flight will take seven hours. We'll cover the first half of the route through the Namadii Corridor in just over an hour, and the remaining distance to Kidiet Olgo in six," Lichtendal replied. He signaled to one of the clone operators, who promptly brought up a holographic map of our route along with the necessary explanations.
As I glanced at the map, I found myself slightly distracted from what was going on around me. My own thoughts crowded out everything else.
I never ceased to be amazed by the methods of travel in this galaxy—especially hyperdrives. That was where the true mystery lay... Despite the fact that the hyperdrive had appeared in the distant past—believed to have been invented by the Ancients more than a hundred thousand years ago—and that its use in recorded history predated even the Galactic Republic, no one fully understood the principles behind its operation, the finer points of its design, or the essence of the processes taking place within it. Yes, every century brought increasingly sophisticated and refined engines—more powerful or more economical—but in this regard, we were like savages who didn't know what a wheel was and had simply stumbled upon a cart.
We travel with the help of these hyperdrives, covering enormous distances, but… yes, even I know the basic principles of how they work—despite the fact that this system is the most complex piece of technology in the galaxy today. In short, this is how it functions: after the system receives a command from the ship's pilot, the hyperspace jump process begins with the collection of gamma radiation in the conductor field. The motivator builds up and modulates energy in the thermonuclear reactor through several kilometers of superconducting wire twisted into a loop. To enter hyperspace, the hyperdrive accelerators are supplied with energy from the ionization chamber. Inertial dampers protect the ship, crew, and cargo from being crushed by the tremendous acceleration. After the jump into hyperspace, the quantum field generator helps stabilize the ship and prevents it from prematurely exiting the alternate dimension.
Deflector shields protect the ship from fatal collisions with interstellar gas and dark matter particles. At such velocities, the material component of matter becomes far less significant than its energy component. In the early days, when flight speeds were relatively low—the engine class by modern standards would barely have reached forty—ships were equipped with particle shields designed to counter the material component of matter. However, once engines managed to cross the threshold of the current twentieth class, the physics of flight changed. The corpuscular shield ceased to be a panacea and was gradually abandoned, replaced by more powerful and economical deflectors that consumed four times less energy.
Well, yes, even now, the internal volume of a ship is used to its absolute limit; no one can afford to carry ballast, let alone excess air. Weapons did not stand still either—blasters, lasers, turbolasers, and ion cannons advanced to a new level, becoming orders of magnitude more powerful than kinetic systems. But let us return to our Bantha.
To prevent the relativistic passing of time while in hyperspace, starships used a so-called "stasis fields" device tuned to the hyperdrive. It remains poorly understood, and how exactly it works is still unclear—but it works. It maintains standard galactic time for the crew and cargo; otherwise, time outside the ship would accelerate dramatically. When exiting hyperspace, an unknown technological solution—unchanged for millennia—is used to decelerate the starship: during entry into and exit from hyperspace, radiation is generated, which is often used by planetary customs authorities to track fleet movements. The flight itself through hyperspace cannot be detected, but it was precisely this "radiation" that made it possible to detect the ship about twenty to thirty seconds before it jumped into normal space.
Other hyperdrive components, such as the 4-axial stabilizer and the hyperdrive regulator, protect the ship from tearing itself apart while traveling through hyperspace.
And there were many other mysteries surrounding the hyperdrive. Why, with identical flight parameters, does a ship travel faster along certain routes and slower along others? Why do ships, regardless of the protection they possess, always exit hyperspace at the edge of the galaxy, where intergalactic space begins? And no matter how hard engineers and technicians tried to make them operate there, they never could—the systems kept failing, and only when the ships turned back did everything start working again…
"All right, Lieutenant. Let us know when we're approaching."
"Yes, sir!"
Leaving the officers on the bridge, I went to look for Ahsoka. Reasonably confident that I could reach her, I focused—and eventually succeeded.
Ahsoka!
Yes, Master?
Where are you?
In the training hall.
Oh, that's great. I'll join you in a moment.