“Norrin,” said Vere, “would you believe that an Imperial officer knows what it’s like to be bullied, and tormented?”
Norrin shrugged. “No, sir. I never would have thought of it, myself.”
“It’s true. My father wasn’t particularly influential. Nor was he very wealthy. In my area, these things meant you were a non-person, someone whose concerns and feelings simply didn’t matter. There to be abused at will. You know what that’s like, don’t you Norrin?”
It was a statement, really. Not a question. Norrin shrugged. Vere had seen a lot, apparently. He’d seen surveillance tapes that Norrin didn’t even know existed.
“The truly amazing thing about the direction the galaxy is going, Norrin, is this: the new way things are shaping out to be? The new...Empire that’s beginning to grow out of the dead Republic? It doesn’t matter in the new way who your parents were, or what planet you came from. Any human from any walk of life can do well, based solely on performance. If you can do a job and do it well, you’ll rise to your level of competence. Do you see how exciting that is for a young man of your ability, Norrin?”
Norrin already had a sense things were not going as they should. “Can we go back now?” he asked. The path ahead was getting murky with branches and weeds.
“Norrin,” said Vere, putting a fatherly arm firmly around Norrin’s tense shoulders, “if I left now, what would happen to you, do you think? I thought better of mentioning to your parents the little trick you pulled with the town’s water supply. Personally, I thought it was quite clever; those hallucinogens you had the sewage chemistry center synthesize, and how you managed to make someone else take the fall for it. Framing the technologist for your little prank was a nice little touch to help throw them off the scent, I would say.”
“He was guilty of some other things. Everyone in town knew about...”
“Have no fear, Norrin. Not a bit.” Vere now released Norrin, pumping his own arms as if lost in a favorite memory. “We know you did that, and the false trail you left for him to follow. How could you know that a pipe of that size, wide enough for a man to walk through, actually led to a neighborhood rather than just your school water supply? The police are still congratulating themselves over that one, in fact. Acting as if they just managed to stop a mad scientist with their wits and acumen, when in reality you practically had to hand them that tech on a mythra skewer!”
Norrin smiled. Then caught himself and looked up in fear at the taller man. Captain Vere smiled down upon Norrin like a proud father.
“It was only a prank,” Norrin said. “It wasn’t what they said on the holonews!”
“I’ve no doubt of that, Norrin. After all, glitterstim as a hallucinogen makes for an exciting story. But it’s quite expensive to import from Kessel. Even for someone as apt at altering computer records as you have proven. But, even the best sometimes can make the mistake of overstepping, Norrin.”
Here Vere stopped. They were standing at a rickety wooden bridge that looked as if it had been standing in place for a century or two.
“If I tried to cross that bridge now, Norrin, what might happen to me?”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“It might break. You might fall.”
“Correct, Norrin, Each time you tried one of your little pranks, you were doing the equivalent of running across that bridge, hoping it wouldn’t break. But Norrin, you’ve been performing these little feats for a while, each one more daring than the last. Eventually, you were going to step on a bad plank and fall. Anyone would; the law of averages is the great equalizer.
“In your case, the slat broke and you fell when you hacked into a local satellite and tried to use it to sneak into my ship’s computers. That was quite a gutsy move, trying to impersonate an officer and give orders to have the Predator rain down blaster fire on your school. The penalties for all involved in such a scheme! Again, I thought it best not to inform your parents of that. Your mother’s a very nice lady who loves her son, and it’d be a shame to worry her so…”
“I just told it to fire at the structure of the school. Put a few holes in the building after it was empty at night!” Norrin said, his voice rising. “I didn’t want to kill anybody!”
“Perhaps. But Norin, what if a shot missed? Or even if it didn’t? You’ve got the children of some very powerful people in your school. Did you think they’d just let it go? Fortunately for you, my people may not be as good as you, but their equipment has been made by the best in the galaxy. So when you tried to hijack the weapons on my ship…”
Here, Vere stepped onto the bridge and kicked a board off. The mist below had fooled them into thinking that they were only a few tens of feet above the river floor. The board never made a sound as it fell; the bottom was farther away that it looked; perhaps hundreds of feet down.
“You made a small slip up. Small, but big enough for one of my techs to follow your trail. And that trail led all the way to and through the other capers that had your technological fingerprints on them. All of which led me here, to you. I’m here now, Norrin,” Vere’s voice took on an edge that made Norrin go cold inside. “And at the touch of a button I could call an orbital strike that would decimate everything and everyone you hold dear in this part of the planet. One button, Norrin. I don’t need a blaster, when I am captain aboard an Imperial Star destroyer, do I? My blaster is in orbit above us, and destroys entire star fleets single-handedly in a matter of minutes. We could make a crater of your home, parents, school, town, the entire populated sector of this planet, really. And there’d be no one to oppose or punish us. No one. Think on that for a moment,”
They walked in silence for a few more minutes, then Vere continued.
“The people who bullied me, Norrin? I followed their careers. Odd little compulsion, really, but I think you’d agree it’s understandable, if you had the intelligence services of the Republic at your disposal.”
“What did you do?”
Vere smiled. “Using my...resources, I was informed or present when a series of unfortunate accidents occurred to each one of the young men who had made my life so difficult growing up.”
Norrin swallowed.. “Did you...did you kill them?” Norrin asked.
Vere stopped, staring into the distance with a smile on his face. “Immensely satisfying, Norrin. When a bully learns his former victim is now his master. Can you imagine that satisfaction?”
Norrin was quiet. Vere smiled, and kept walking. Norrin kept up. “Norrin, one thing I’ve learned is that no man does great things by himself. There are always other great men and women who assist him in his ventures. To achieve greatness, it’s not enough to be great yourself. You also have to surround yourself with great people. And you, Norrin, I think, could be one of those great people.
“Of course, if you decide to stay here, there is school on Firstday, and you might have to endure the unpleasantries of an Imperial investigation into your activities. I’m certain your parents wouldn’t want that, hm? The penalties for such an action are, shall we say, severe, for all involved. Or who might be involved. And owning the home where the offenses took place would certainly count as might being involved.”
----
TO BE CONTINUED...