<div style="font-size:10px;">This role-play occurs immediately after the story titled ‘Incursion, First Appearances’, and is an addendum thereof.</div>

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Johnson,
You are being re-assigned, report to my offices at once.
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He stared at the note – written on the official department letterhead – and blinked. Reassigned? He had just been assigned to the TROHAN project, and they were reassigning him already? Did they, that ever anonymous they, think developing highly sophisticated technology was child’s play; and that one could move from this project to that at will?

Shaking his head with regret about an inherently broken system that he could not hope to fix, Johnson stuffed the note in his white lab coat and went back to work. He would complete this data scan before reporting in, better not leave the task half done. TROHAN was just getting started, and desperately needed dedicated people assigned to it. Yet every time someone competent arrived, he was moved almost immediately. TROHAN had great possibilities, possibilities that no one else seemed to see.





“Johnson, reporting as requested Sir.” The scientist didn’t bother saluting. Technically he was a voluntary civilian working with the army, not for the army. His superior frowned slightly, obviously noting the deliberate lack of salute, but didn’t bother mentioning it.

“Yes, Johnson,” replied the officer, a General to be precise. “Ah… you’ve just been assigned to the TROHAN project, correct?”

“Yes, Sir,” Johnson replied curtly.

“Yes… well, you’re being reassigned, effective immediately.” His superior shuffled a few papers, and handed a sheaf over to the scientist.

“Why?” asked Johnson, the irritation he felt crystal clear in his voice.

“Because TROHAN is a class B3 project, while this project is a class A,” replied the General.

Class A? A civilian bumped up to a class A project? It was unprecedented, unheard of if not outright prohibited…

“I am not cleared for class A projects Sir.”

“You are now Johnson, it’s all in that sheaf of papers. I suggest you read them before you continue to question our motives, ok?”

Nodding in resignation, Johnson turned on his heel and marched crisply out of the office and waiting room into the hallway. As the executive sized door closed behind him he stopped and glared at the paperwork. More reading.





“Johnson, eh? This way please.”

The Human private who had met him at Clak’dor IV’s spaceport obviously disliked the idea of escorting a civilian, but he kept his prejudice to himself. Or perhaps it was just Johnson’s imagination.

The paperwork he had received from General Jameson had been long on the fluff and short on the details of the project he was moving to. All he knew is that the project was a class A, more secret than secret itself, and was codenamed ODD. Beyond that, it could have been a military-grade kitchen blender for all he knew.


“Welcome to project ODD,” said the Bith scientist who was escorting him an hour later. “I’m Mi’ll’l, you will be working with me for the next while.”

“Johnson, pleased to meet you,” replied Johnson. “What, exactly, have I been assigned to here?” He was rather curious to discover the reason for his rude re-positioning.

“Ah,” replied the Bith with a smile. “That is what everyone asks. Well, it’s hard to say exactly. It isn’t development, you can be sure of that. More of a … deconstruction, if anything.”

“Oh?” replied Johnson, intrigued slightly. “Deconstruction… sounds interesting.”

“Yes, it most certainly is,” said his escort. “You will see it in a few minutes, all detailed questions can be answered after that.”

With a shrug Johnson assented, and continued along with his companion in silence. The walls about them were far from the sterile environment he was used to. Grit was ground into the floor from hundreds of feet marching to and fro daily, and there was a sheen of grime on the handrails that lined all the hallways. He avoided touching anything but the floor, which was unfortunately mandatory if one wished to move.

Turning a few corners, and trodding down a few corridors the two soon reached what was apparently their destination. The dual doors opened after Mi’ll’l swiped his palm over a reader. A gust of pressurized air momentarily made Johnson blink rapidly as he entered the room. His eyes finally clearing, he took in the area around. It was an enormous room, capable of housing many thousands of people. Or, a few ships for … deconstruction. For that was what he knew he was assigned here to do. Directly below the platform he and Mi’ll’l stood upon, down a fifty meter drop was what appeared to be a space craft, undergoing construction, or rather, deconstruction. Workmen busied themselves about the ship; the spark of a wielder was visible here and there. Strangely enough, every workman was dressed in white.

“It looks like a bird,” said Johnson, slightly aghast at both the sight of the ship and the prospect of being reduced to a simple demolitions man.

“A bird, of prey,” replied Mi’ll’l. The Bith motioned to a lift nearby with one hand, and continued. “It’s called the Stalker, and it is indeed that. As you can tell, it is molded heavily after the Maruader Corvette, with some extensive modifications made to the external design. Inside however, the ship is completely different from its apparent parent.”

“A warship?” asked Johnson curiously. Visible in several places on the hull were scorch marks, obviously from laser fire and other weapons systems.

“No, a scout ship. She’s fast, nimble, and highly deadly. The shield generators do not produce a high enough rating to be a standard warship. However, as a hit and run weapon she could be incredibly effective.”

Even not being a true military man, Johnson could tell that this ship was not heavily armed. At a little over 200 meters long, there were surprisingly few weapon turrets to call a ship ‘highly deadly’.

“You see, Johnson,” continued the Bith, sensing Johnson’s slight confusion, “This ship is equipped with a cloaking system. At command, it immediately becomes invisible… invisible to sensors, sight, all around invisible. Don’t ask me how we obtained it, that’s not our job. We’re here to determine how to counteract this baby, and hopefully figure out how to reproduce it.”

It was now that Johnson realized why he had been assigned to this class A project. Not because of some bureaucrat who thought it would be fun to play with his life, but rather, his extensive knowledge on the subject of space, and varying substances transmitted thereof.

“So, I’m here to find a weakness in the cloak?” he asked.

“Yes. That will be your only job. We’ve already stripped the cloak from the ship, so you will not be working here. A scientist named Vor did the stripping, he will be working with us... He’s been working on a cloaking project himself, quite an expert in the field if I may say so. You’ll be meeting him soon enough. Come, this way, you should tour the ship first.”

The lift had long since touched down on the lower layer, and Johnson found himself led to the underbelly of this … stalker.

"You should tell your men to be more careful with the explosives," mentioned Johnson as he and his Bith companion passed through yet another room blackened and charred from a detonation.

"That wasn’t us Johnson, we got it this way. Obviously, the previous owners of this ship did not appreciate the intrusion into their home."

Obviously, thought Johnson. I would object as well.

"Did they survive?" he asked.

"Who?"

"The crew, former crew of this ship." The two had stopped in a particularly blackened room, and the Bith stopped to look at Johnson.

"They don’t give us that information."

"Ah," said Johnson, nodding sagely. It was all based off of a need to know basis, and the scientists didn’t need to know.

"This room," said Mi’ll’l, "Is the engine room. As you can see, the former owners attempted to detonate the ship with some hand explosives. Fortunatly for us, and perhaps them, the volatile components were shielded well enough to not be effected by the explosion. Damage was done, however, to various control units. We’re having a hard time piecing that together, but it is a minor problem. Moving this way…"

The two stepped out of the engine room as two more white clad people entered pushing a now empty parts container ahead of them.

"This room here is the cloak room. This should interest you, and I have no doubt you’ll be back a few times to examine it."

It was a longish room, over fifty meters long by twenty wide. Johnson whistled at the sheer length of it.

"The cloak took up this entire room?"

"Affirmative. It’s a very large system; it took us forever to remove it. Notice the couplings, where it attached to the hull, Outside are projector nozzles, now removed of course. We’re still not quite too sure how it works, Vor is working on that."

"And I’m here to punch a hole in it, correct?"

"Yep."

"Well, let’s take a look at it," said Johnson.



*



"Hello, you must be Johnson. I’m Vor." The young man held out a greasy hand to shake Johnson’s hand, but paused after a moment. "Sorry, I won’t get you dirty now."

Johnson nodded appreciatively.

"I suppose you’ll want to see what you’ll be working on…" said Vor, almost bouncing around with … anticipation? Impatience? Johnson wasn’t sure which it was, maybe a combination of both?

"Naturally," he replied.

"Well, come this way then. It’s not too pretty, but it works."

It was indeed an ugly system, and large too. At this point, Johnson wasn’t sure how they had gotten it into the ship he had just seen. It was huge, wires and nodes, and crystal setting stands scattered all over in an incredibly messy manner.

"It works, you say?"

"Yes, here, I’ve been prepping it for another firing, I’ll show you."

The young scientist motioned to Johnson to step behind a white line on the floor, and hit a few switches on his control pad. There was a crackle, a fuzz, and then, it was gone. Johnson gaped for a few seconds before recovering his posture.

"Pretty incredible, eh?" asked Vor, squinting at Johnson through a grease stained face and a pair of reading spectacles he must have just put on.

"Yeah," was al Johnson could get out.

"And you’re here to find out a way to detect it."

"Yeah."

The collective data the scientists here at this faculty on the subject of cloaking was remarkably slim. There was only one paper on cloaking theory; everything else was what had been written as the group disassembled the ship. Realizing that appropriate reading material was necessary to get the theoretical juices flowing, Johnson went up against the stubborn bureaucratic wall that blocked almost any procedure in the army. Any army, in fact, was overly bureaucratic.

"I said, I want that list of books delivered as soon as possible."

"Do you have a work permit?"

"No, why would I need a work permit to order in a few books?"

"I need a work permit, you need a permission slip."

And so, he went to get a permission slip. The other fellow could get his own work permit, previous experience told Johnson that it was futile to attempt to get a work permit for someone who was not you.

"Do you have executive authority?"

"No, if I had executive authority I wouldn't be here, asking for permission."

"Oh. I'll need a few days to have this list scanned, and approved."

And so, he waited. The work on the cloaking device was going rather well, it was incredibly simple in design. Or perhaps, it just seemed that way because Vor was so ... adept ... at manipulating it. It was almost as if this man had been born with the controls to the unsightly device in his grubby greasy hands. He was so adept in fact, that Johnson was sure he had had previous experience with cloaks. He kept his suspicions to himself for a few days, then, unable to take the suspicion he outright asked the man.

"So, Vor, ever worked on a project like this before?"

The question seemed to take Vor by supprise, and rightly so.

"Actually, yes," replied Vor with almost no hesitation. "I built my own cloak a year back. Cloaked a shuttle, and flew it into the palace courtyard on Clak'dor. Almost got myself killed doing that, but I got the attention I needed."

Johnson was quite stunned at this blunt revelation of information. Built his own cloak? Flew a ship into the Palace?

"Why, if you don't mind telling me, did you do something like that?"

"Simple, I needed to draw attention to the capabilities of a cloakable ship. The bureaucracy was so thick around my project, built in my spare time too, that it would have taken years to get it into mass production."

"Mass production?"

"Yeah. It's not a powerful cloak, more like a major sensor mask combined with a light-wave disruptor. Powerful enough to evade civilian security scans, but a military probe would punch through it eventually. But, it can be made relatively cheaply. It is limited by size though, twenty meters is the limit that it can hide without major upgrades."

"I see why you're so adept at this cloaking system then, having built one yourself. That answers a few questions I had..."

Vor grinned, and revealed yet another surprise.

"Actually, this is totally different from the system I built. This is a stygium cloak; mine was just a sensor mask on steroids. This is more akin to the Infiltrator class transport."

"Ah..." Johnson was silent for a moment. "Infiltrator? What the freck is that?"

"Old, old ship. Only a few survived after the great Sith war, and the Republic. Even fewer survived the clone wars and the rise of the Empire. It's estimated only twenty are in existence today... ten of which the Republic owns."

Johnson frowned, and waited for Vor to continue. The young man didn't seem to have any inhibitions about speaking of what he knew.

"Well, no-one is supposed to know about the Infiltrator... They're powered by a stygium cloak just like this, and it's darn near impossible to get a replacement crystal for them, so they're used very infrequently. Or, I should say, were used infrequently. Now, things have changed."

The tone of Vor's voice at the last statement stopped Johnson from prodding any more, and the two men continued to work in silence. They were constructing an imma projector, on a very small scale. For the last several days they had been throwing every type of beam, ray, and sensor wave at the cloak that they could find. So far, nothing had penetrated it. In space, however, it would be a different story.


*


"Any news on my books?"

"Nope, still undergoing processing."

"Ok, hurry it up, will you?"

"I'll try, you know how it is."

"Yeah, yeah."

Five minutes after hanging up, Johnson grabbed the receiver again, and called the base commander.

"Hello," said a very informal voice.

"Ah... is it possible to get a few books down here ASAP?"

There was a pause at the end of the line for a moment.

"I'm heading out tomorrow for some supplies, what do you need?"

Revenge.
It is the tool of those who have nothing to loose. It drives men beyond the breaking point., it keeps one fed on anger alone. Men will act strange when driven by that primal desire for vengeance, they will sacrifice everything they know and love in that singular pursuit and even when there is nothing left to give; it will light coal of their soul... Revenge.

If not for revenge, some of the greatest changes to alter the face of the galaxy would never have transpired. Certainly, if not for revenge, Meung Mon-Sol would likely not find himself in his current position. Currently, Meung was stuffed uncomfortably into an escape pod, spinning through the reaches of space, just off of the Mynot Hyperspace-Lane. Packed away in the under-sized canister, Meung carried with him only the most basic supplies to carry out his sabotage. He carried only his tools, and his distaste for one Beff Pike.

Long hours had passed since Meung had locked himself in the pod and dropped off, unnoticed, from the vessel which he'd stowed away aboard. Long, seemingly endless hours, through which Meung, focused on his downfall, had grown ever more bitter. He blamed his former President for his exile and fall from grace, he blamed everyone he could while everyone else blamed him. How would he have known that the very self-destruct he had rejected would have become the last line of defense... Now, because of that very incident, the Guild had lost one of their prized Stalker Corvettes.

A scape-goat was needed to cover it all up, to make the situation go away... and that was where Meung came in. One of the project leaders on the initial design of the Stalker, he was the perfect choice for a fall-guy. Somewhat incompetent in the first place, Meung was only given the breaks he had recievd because of his heritage. His father had been a close personal friend of Beff Pike, a gift which did not fall to Meung. Both his father and Beff had known that Meung was rampant with the 'klutz' gene, but neither was willing to call the boy a loss. So, he had been trained and educated and then, tucked quietly away where he could do no harm. Or so they had thought.

The Stalker project left Meung just the chance he needed to climb into a more precipitous seat and grab some real power for himself. Unfortunately neither Beff nor his father had managed to catch it in time, and before anyone really knew how, Meung was the legitimate project leader for the Stalker endavour. From the moment of his rise into power, the project had begun to fall woefully behind schedual, costs began to skyrocket and everything verged on total collapse. Had not one of Meungs fathers friends spoken up for the boy and offered to bail him out of the situation, the Stalker would likely have never seen the light of the production line. Meung considered it a success while all other parties saw it as it was; a near-miss.

Naturally, Meung never saw any of it as his fault, thought himself above suspicion because of his fathers name. Sadly for Meung, even that would not be enough to prevent the boy being called upon to pay for his short-falls. Meung never even saw his own failure and his ensuing hussy-fit did nothing to help his case, everyone he had counted as a friend ended up turning their backs on him, effectively exiling the boy from the Guild and the only life he'd ever known.

Chaos had followed him all the way to the fringes of Guild territory, an adventure unto itself.Up until that point poor Meung had been nothing but confused with the whirlwind of change to properly orient himself and assign the blame that he knew was not his. For more then a few standard weeks, Meung jaunted across the spacelanes in a daze, not sure where to go or what to do with himself. Then, seemingly out of the nowhere, clarity had struck. For what reasons or how, only Meung would know, but it was an easy enough conclusion. The Bounty Hunters Guild was to blame... all of them, and their boss, Beff Pike, the most.

Quick enough, Meung had stowed away aboard a private transport bound to pass near by to Anthos Republic space, limited supplies in hand, then jettisoned himself free in an escape pod when the moment was right. He really had no plan otherwise, he knew only that BHG had lost their lone Stalker to the people of the Anthos Republic in a failed raid.

Betting his last few good-luck tokens, Meung waited, stuffed in what would either be his salvation or his tomb, quietly waiting with trasnpoders transmitting his position on all frequencies, in the hope that the right people would be first to find him.

"Wow."

It was all they could say, as the labor of seven weeks came to a completion.

"Wow."

There it stood, this 'Stalker', in its fully re-assembled glory. They had stripped it, gutted it, repaired it, replaced, patched, hacked, spliced, combined, and finally, completed it.

Its repulsorlifts held it a meter off the hangar floor, the steady thrum pulsating through the large building. Its sleek lines did indeed make it look like a stalker, a bird of prey. All seven scientists, and their aids, stood in the observation deck protected from the dangerous repulsor-waves and gazed upon the fruits of their labor.

"A beaut," said Johnson, in admiration.

"Yep," said Vor, agreeing.

Had it not been for the assistance of the defector found just days ago, they would hardly be looking at the ship, as it hovered above the floor. Just a few days ago, they were banging their heads over the computer guy, wondering how hard it could be to slice a computer.

"It's top of the line! Give me a few weeks, and I may have it cracked for you."

They hadn't had a few weeks to wait, not on a 'perhaps'. Then, he had come. Escorted into the faculty by a series of armed guards, Mon-Sol had stayed for but a brief half hour. He had inputted his security clearance codes, and given a brief instruction on how it all worked. The second half had been unnecessary; he was speaking to men who might as well have built the ship themselves. His security codes were the only things they had needed.

"Ok," said Vor, with a sigh. "Let's see how this works..." He glanced over to Johnson, and Mi'll'l, and then back at his control panel. He, Vor, had worked on the cloak itself exclusively, taking it apart, putting it together, replacing parts analyzing, de-analyzing. The button he was about to push would test his theories, his personal ideas, and his craftsmanship. It could determine his fate as a military scientist.

"3, 2, 1..."

And he pushed the button. With a dull whirr audible in the observation chamber, the 100-meter plus ship vanished from their sight. Not a ripple in the air, not a fading from sight, but simply gone. There was an audible gasp from the crowd of scientists, for even though they had worked on the ship, and known what it was capable of, it was still a startling thing to see it simply vanish like it had.

"Well, I guess that means I did a good job," said Vor with a relieved grin. He motioned to another scientist, who stepped up to his own consol with a slightly nervous smile.

"Engines, engaging now," said the man, as he pushed a few buttons. As the rockets on the rear of the craft fired, the heat readings on each consol went off the scale. There was a monitor available to each scientist over his consol so each of them could see what the Stalker saw. Now, the monitor was displaying the ground fading away, and the ship moving higher into the atmosphere.

The engine scientist put the ship though a few paces, the propulsion system was nothing revolutionary and thus didn't need to be tested very much. Finally, he set the craft to hover above the development building.

"Johnson, let's see what you came up with," said Vor as he wiped his palms off on a cloth.

Shrugging his shoulders slightly, Johnson stepped forward. His consol was different from the others in that it was completely smooth. He preferred a completely computerized control scheme, something that was easy to change and impossible for anyone but himself to use.

"Tests beginning," he said, his voice firm and confident – a feeling he did not actually possess at the moment. He only had two tests ready, two tests that he thought might work. A gravometric and magometric display appeared on his consol, and he initialized his tests. For a few painful minutes the gravometric display stayed still, before bouncing around a bit.

"Gravometric test detects the planet just fine," kidded Johnson, everyone chuckled.

"Magometric... we're getting a faint reading straight up."

For a moment there was silence, as the scientists pondered this revelation. Then, Vor cracked a grin, and joke.

"Guess you have job security, Johnson."

Handshakes went all around, success.

Apocryphal:

The readings were still faint when the board began to flicker.

"What was that?" one scientist asked.

Johnson stared at the board for a moment until the full horror of it's import was called to mind.

All that work into the bloody ship and I didn't even work on the bloody consol!

The board suddenly made a weird beeping noise.

"This ship is going higher?" one Admiral asked.

A scream was heard in the air and it was getting louder..

"umm.." sweat poured out the tired Johnson. "Not quite.."

He turned and screamed, "EVERYBODY GET AWA--!!!"


The craft plunged into the people at a high rate of speed turning the spectators to mush.


The ship worked.

The remote control board was built by the lowest government bidder since all funding went to the development of this broken ship.


R&D Capture Approved.

Congrats!

:)

LOL! Thanks. :)