Everybody knew these things took time. Sure, an explosion could happen at any moment, but it might wait a few centuries, too. And that node of the supply network had been in place so long it had become hard to replace. They'd have to juggle half the sector's supply lines to get things put to rights again.
The Empire maintained a gargantuan logistics network to move its vast resources. This network was inefficient, unwieldy, wasteful, slow and encouraged the stockpiling of massive quantities of supplies. However it could easily handle loss of resources due to theft, misfiling and other incidents. On the other hand, the Rebels were finding even after their massive campaign of pillage they had few stockpiled supplies and must be quick and thrifty with their logistics, else they would quickly succumb to the Empire's might.
Redistribution of a supply network on such a scale was a nightmare.
So, since the people making the decision were Imperials far from the star, they made a nod toward preparedness by installing cumbersome hyperdrives on the orbital facilities there, making hyperspace message pods available to call for a more complete evacuation when the sensors were all agreed the explosion had begun, and went right on doing business in spite of a threatening nova.
Bureaucratic inertia was a wonderful thing to study if you wanted to know the secrets of an insane mind.
As a major transshipment point, the supply station was truly massive in scale, holding 60 billion tons of Imperial war material, including everything an entire planetary culture could amass: socks, paint and blaster gas, to droids, parts and machine tools, to luxury items for privileged members of the officer class and cheap entertainment for the troops. Virtually everything and lots of it, as stockpiles were the only way to compensate for supply ship delays, all too frequent these days. There were enough uniforms alone of various types to clothe a planetary population, all neatly shrink wrapped and stacked in cases, over half of which were lost, crammed behind and beneath a dozen shipments of sweet candies and motivator lubricant, access to which was blocked by an inestimable pile of bureaucratic form 1071-E for the reporting of lost supplies.
For the servicing of the constant flow of transport fleet cargo ships, a repair station had been moved in orbit. And due to the inevitable snags of parts shipments constantly diverted by higher priority projects, a sector transport authority official had pulled rank at some point in the past to get four factory stations moved to this location, producing vital fleet parts and spares - some of which were diverted at the source to keep the transports running smoothly.
Those transports were constant at the depot, arriving and departing daily in fleets of dozens, scores and fifties.
Over all this benign chaos, four Imperial class Star Destroyers sat watching with a small orbital defense station assisting them. Some commanders felt the duty boring and not worthy of a military officer's skill. Other fleet captain's appreciated the benefits of staying close to the goodies, and their crews, with the newest supplies and best entertainment and little to no risk of actual fighting, tended to agree with them.
It was a soft and cozy spot.
It was also a soft and cozy spot that had six Flamberge cruisers and a Dreadnought floating at low power on station at the edge of scanning range, with sensor probes deployed much closer for identifying the incoming ship traffic.
Finally it appeared.
In some twisted Imperial parody of logic, Dungeon ships were considered part of the supply network.
Spotting it, one Rebel officer turned to another. "What's the plan?"
See other episodes by Lionheart
(Posted Fri, 09 Apr 2004 02:48)
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