INT. DELANTINE – IMPERIAL BASE/HOLOPROJECTION CHAMBER – EVENING
Bail enters the holoprojection chamber. Upon stepping up upon the holoprojection platform, the blue-tinted image of MOFF MARTHAN, a tall, lean Duros, materializes before him.
BAIL: Moff Marthan. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, sir.
BAIL: Likewise, Capt. Organa. (beat) I read your mission report, Captain – many times, in fact. It made for some particularly heavy reading. I had to make certain I wasn’t … misreading your recollection of the events which transpired on your mission.
BAIL: I swear that it’s 100% true to the facts, sir.
MOFF MARTHAN: Hmm … yes, I’m certain they are. That is, I believe you believe that to be the case. Certainly, you did encounter something out there – the mutagenic beasts, for example.
OBI-WAN: Rakghouls.
MOFF MARTHAN: Rakghouls, yes. (beat) As for your reports of a ghost, a “Sith sorceress” ….
BAIL: (frowns) Sir, she was real.
MOFF MARTHAN: Captain, I know all too well the tricks the mind can play on you when you’re suffering from heat stroke. Cmdr. Vaness suffered a psychotic break as a result of the transformations wrought to her DNA, and in your state, you misinterpreted her violent behaviour as a case of spectral possession. It’s perfectly understandable, Captain.
BAIL: Moff, why am I here? If it’s to put my faculties under a microscope –
MOFF MARTHAN: I’m sorry, Captain. I’ve gone off on a tangent. You’re not here to be re-evaluated; the doctors on Delantine have assured us you’re of sound mind and body. (beat) I’m offering you another mission.
BAIL: Sir, Raia’s body is being shipped back to Alderaan. I have all intention of being there when she is laid to rest. So all due respect, but get somebody else on the job.
MOFF MARTHAN: This mission is completely optional, Captain, I assure you; you can decline if you so wish.
BAIL: I decline.
MOFF MARTHAN: (frowns; cont’d) Just give me the honour of hearing me out first.
BAIL: Very well, sir.
MOFF MARTHAN: Yours was not the only reconnaissance team dispatched to the Bajilon system. Are you aware of that?
BAIL: No, I wasn’t.
MOFF MARTHAN: Four other teams were sent out into Wild Space alongside yours. Beside yourselves, only one team found their way back to Imperial space. They succeeded in their mission, actually, and they gathered much intel on the Athan presence in the system.
Typing a command into an unseen panel, Moff Marthan brings a panoramic shot of Bajilon Prime into view over both their heads. More Athan ships than can be counted orbit the crystalline world.
BAIL: (dumbfounded) My Lord! All those ships – half the Athan fleet must be stationed there!
MOFF MARTHAN: 63.11%, if our estimates are correct.
Entering in another command, the moff zooms and focuses in upon a specific craft: a large artificial spheroid twenty-two kilometres in diametre.
MOFF MARTHAN: Do you recognize that type of ship?
BAIL: A battlemoon? But weren’t all three battlemoons destroyed above Mustafar?
MOFF MARTHAN: All three that we knew of, Captain. (beat) Actually, from what the team was able to glean, it’s no longer a battlemoon as such. It’s been retrofitted to serve as a … hyperspacial distribution board.
BAIL: (nods) For maintaining all the interdictor generators the Clonemasters have in operation cutting off the system. Instead of having a maintenance crew work the stations of each individual generator, just slave them all to this one machine for convenience’s sake.
MOFF MARTHAN: Exactly. (beat) That battlemoon’s what’s keeping the entire interdiction field up. Take it out and the field goes down.
BAIL: Restoring the hyperroutes into the system.
MOFF MARTHAN: And that’s the new mission – to infiltrate the battlemoon and take it out of the game, knock down the field so that we can send our ships in to pulverize the whiteface fleet before they can send for their reinforcements.
BAIL: I don’t understand – why not just send a defender or destroyer in to take the battlemoon out?
MOFF MARTHAN: You haven’t read up on battlemoon capabilities, have you, Captain? They have powerful deflectors – stronger than the ones utilized by Imperator-class star destroyers. It took an entire fleet of cruisers to disable only one of the three at Mustafar.
BAIL: So how are we to blow this battlemoon out of space if a fleet had trouble getting it done?
MOFF MARTHAN: Not blow, Captain, fry. Our people have devised a particularly nasty computer virus, one potent enough to infect all the battlemoon’s on-board systems and give it a complete digital lobotomy. It’s not as spectacular as a fiery explosion, but just as effective. (beat) So, Captain, still uninterested?