He held out his fist, with the thumb extended.
Six Months Later
The conference room was well lit, but the men in it had bleary and tired eyes. Their uniforms had been crisply pressed early that morning, but eighteen hours in the conference room looking at potential candidates for the program was enough to turn even the most dedicated officer into dribbling idiot.
“Where’s the next batch?” one said, his voice weary. Like everyone else, he was hoping that this would be the last group, knowing inside that it wouldn’t even be close.
“This,” said the youngest officer among the five seated around the table, “Is the last from the boot camp over near the Aurelia system. The interviews, as usual, covered aeronautical terminology, reaction time, and the other subjects. After weeding out the underperformers on the regular tests, we received this batch of one-hundred and nineteen from the graduating class of about ten-thousand.”
“Are these in any particular order?” said the oldest officer in the room with a voice that had long surrendered to boredom.
“No,” said the youngest. “Not at all. And in the latest communication from central command, we are reminded that if any of the following candidates fails the Emperor, the blame will be upon us at least in part for having approved him for service.”
“When are these ranks going to be full?” grumbled the oldest officer.
The first face of the latest batch appeared. Dark haired, he looked confident in the interview pose.
“Name and planet of origin,” said the faceless interviewer.
“Dav Eccles. Coruscant,” said the recorded image of Dav’s head, floating in the interview room.
“Explain the concept of aerodynamics, as applied to...”
While Dav answered the question, a line of text scrolled beneath him, detailing his schooling, level of completion, and his place in his class, and the level of his class in relation to the other classes on his world, and the academic level of his world’s system compared to those of other systems. To the delight of the other men in the room, it was obvious that he was officer material within less than a minute of interview time.
“He knows his stuff,” said another officer. “He’s obviously gone through physics class. Pass him and let’s skip to the next one.”
The youngest officer reached over and tapped a small square on the display. A pretty, red-haired young woman appeared.
“Jada Sanddancer. Tattoine,” she answered when the first questions were asked of her.
She wasn’t going to be quite as easy as the last one. “When it comes to formal terminology, she’s not had the level of schooling that the last one had. She was raised on a...moisture farm,” said another officer after looking at his datapad. He said the last words as if she’d been raised on a dung heap, but insisted on calling it an estate.
“She scored high in ability- apparently she’s had more actual flying time than most of the others in this group. It’s in formal schooling that she falls down.”
“The real question we have to ask here is: can we put her in a TIE fighter and be reasonably confident she won’t crash the thing before she’s shot to pieces in it. If the answer is yes, then we say pass and move on.”
The scrolling text spoke for itself. Imperial cadets were put through tons of evaluations, and when it came to the flight sims she scored in the top fifth percentile. If they didn’t say pass when most candidates were in the top tenth, they might find themselves up for review and reassignment. The academy on the Adeptus was a far better place to be stationed on than some world where you’d eat poison gas and lava for breakfast if you went for a morning stroll outside the cramped, protective domes.
“Pass,” they all said. Jada’s face disappeared, followed by a blank space.
“What happened?” someone asked.
“Not sure,” said the youngest officer, fiddling with the controls. Suddenly, a young man’s head with sharp features and short dark hair appeared. “This candidate’s name is Slak Daggart. From Corellia. The actual interview seems to have disappeared, but his scores are here. Top one-percentile in just about everything, from academics to physical performance to...well, everything in that particular class.”
“Then I assume he receives a pass,” said the oldest officer at the table, “unless we’d like to take the time to order an official inquiry? As I recall, the only necessary procedure is to make a note of concerns and move on to the next.”
They were in total agreement. Everybody wanted to get done and go home. Or at least, to their sparse apartments where they didn’t have to sit in uncomfortable uniforms around a table for hours and hours and hours.
“Well, then, next. Norrin Mek.”
A skinny, sallow-faced youth with freckles, high cheekbones and a long, slender neck stared out at them. The effect was comical, really. After seeing tall, robust males and the occasional female, Norrin’s un-athletic visage made the table laugh.
“What is this?” someone asked.
“This,” said the youngest officer, “is Captain Vere’s personal project. Captain Vere, of the Predator? This lad comes with several important classifications, the captain’s personal recommendation, along with his expressed wishes that the young man be made technical officer of the group he is assigned to when he is accepted to the academy as a pilot.”
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The officers all looked at each other. Every now and then, a candidate popped up like this. Experience had taught them they could either mount a lengthy investigation to see if this action was warranted, or just...
“Pass,” they all said in unison.
“Next,” said the older officer.
The next picture was a large young face, thick and fleshy with a simple, slightly open-mouthed smile on his face.
More chuckles.
“Does this cretin actually talk? He looks like he has an empty room in his head,” said a voice from one corner of the room.
“Hold that thought, would you?” said the older officer. “I think I saw this fellow at the camp when I was judging a training exercise.”
“You recall one soldier, out of an entire camp?”
“He’s big enough they had him do the work of three when he was there. I’m not certain, but if it is him, well...stop the vid for a moment.”
Bondo’s ghostly, recorded face froze in midair as his voice stopped speaking.
“Gentlemen,” said the older officer, standing. “I realize many of you may not recall the state of the Republic in its more sanguine days before the chaos of the Clone Wars, or the treachery of the Jedi. But the Republic ideal of combat stated, among other principles, that we never leave an injured comrade behind. Does anyone recall learning this in flight school, back then?”
One or two heads nodded. “Rule two-hundred thirty-three,” said a voice.
“Yes!” said the older officer, now almost excited. “But with the onset of the Clone Wars, with soldiers viewed as products, equipment more than people, our army has largely lost this principle, even among the new cadets that were not of cloned origin.
“I put it to you, gentlemen, that soldiers like this young man are what is needed to bring the Republic back to its glory. When I witnessed him in combat exercises, he routinely ignored courses of action that would have won him personal awards, glories and athletic records in favor of assisting his teammates. He has that sense of camaraderie innately, as part of his culture, that we have to spend the better part of a year teaching our cadets through indoctrination and intense propaganda.”
“He may be a man of virtue, Commander,” said one of the younger officers, the sarcasm almost dripping out of his voice, “but the new Imperial Navy needs pilots. We don’t mind them dying, so long as they manage to kill at least two of our enemies, first.”
“If you have a squadron trained to be a team, a surrogate family, then you’ll find you’ll have fewer deaths in space of your expensively trained pilots or the expensive ships they fly. However, as you know, I hate to go over the three minutes per candidate, and we need to see the rest of his interview.”
They grunted and looked at the vacant face hovering above the holoprojector as the youngest officer looked around nervously and tapped the ‘play’ button again.
“State your name and planet of origin,” said the interviewer off screen.
“My name is Bondo,” the subject answered slowly. “I was born in space, on the argo freighter Crasna.”
“Why do you want to be a pilot in the Imperial Navy?”
Bondo thought. “Because...I’ll get to see many new places.” He spoke slowly, but with finality.
“Are those scores actually his?” said the voice that had insulted Bondo a few seconds before. The scrolling scores showed only above average ability in language, but in the top one-percentile for mathematics, physics and a host of other areas that many other better-spoken candidates fell down on.
“How did he learn that on an argo freighter?” someone asked.
“Does it matter how? I’ve heard of this,” the older officer continued. “Where many children have to learn this kind of thing in the classroom, children on the clan freighters learn it as part of their lives. This lad likely never had to sit down with a stylus in his life to do a story problem in a classroom. His life has been one story problem after another. Weight conversions, rates of interest, physics, navigation...the kind of this our pilots have to go to school to learn for years at a time, this fellow likely knew before he left his youngling years. He just has different names for them, is all.”
“Bondo,” the interviewer’s recorded voice continued, “A pilot has many duties during a flight. Many of them have to be carried out simultaneously. What are some of them?”
Bondo smiled, and began to recite a list of duties as though it were a long-memorized school lesson.
“Pilots,” he said, “take responsibility to navigate the flight, view and guide the activities of the clan, check instruments, and keep track of the weather when in the atmo, keep track of hazards when out of the atmo, control the height and monitor any air traffic. Doing all these and more, often at once, requires multi-tasking abilities and strong concentration.”
There was a pause.
“Chrome,” said an officer quietly.
“Where did you learn that, Bondo?” said the interviewer, whose voice sounded similarly impressed.
“Everybody’s got to be ready on the Crasna, in case there’s a problem. We always learn duties, things to do if things go wrong, what we have to be doing, everything we need to know if the captain can’t be the captain to us anymore.”
“You mean, if the captain dies?”
“That’s one of the things, yeah.”
“Stop the interview,” said a voice in the room.
The holotape stopped.
“Gentlemen, knowledge of flight procedures, a demonstrated ability to memorize chain of command and emergency procedures, and an ability to unite a team when necessary. All that is deficient is a simple level of vocabulary, easily remedied in the academy if he shows the same degree of motivation that he has to this point.”
The younger officer’s eyes narrowed, going from being glazed over with boredom to their usual piercing blue at the thought of a calculated challenge. “Commodore, your faith in this cadet is most intriguing. I’ve noted your past levels of service and success- Would you be willing to put your name down as giving this...Bondo Crasna a personal recommendation? Bear in mind, if he fails it will reflect poorly upon you, rather than him.”
The old Commodore smiled. The subtext wasn’t lost on the others in the room- challenge accepted, youngling. “By all means, Second Lieutenant. Put my name down on his form if it will help his chances. Well, it would seem we are already over time on this one. All in favor?”
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TO BE CONTINUED...