Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy_ Champions of the Force - Kevin J. Anderson [28]
“Good morning, everyone,” Tol Sivron said, seating himself at the head of the table and tapping his needle claws on the tabletop. “I see you’ve all brought your agendas with you. Excellent.” He scowled at the four stormtroopers standing outside the door. “Captain, please step outside and close the door. This is a private, high-level meeting.”
The stormtrooper made no answer as he ushered his companions outside and sealed the door with a hiss of compressed gases.
“There,” Tol Sivron said, shuffling papers in front of him. “I’d like you each to report on recent activities in your division. After we’ve discussed the possible implications of anything new, we can then brainstorm strategies. I take it our revised Emergency Plans have been distributed to all members of this facility?” Sivron looked at Yemm, the paperwork person.
The Devaronian smiled pleasantly and nodded. The horns on his head bobbed up and down. “Yes, Director. Everyone has received a copy of the full three-hundred-sixty-five-page hard-copy document with instructions to read it diligently.”
“Good,” Sivron said, checking off the first item on his agenda. “We’ll leave time at the end of the meeting for new business, but I’d like to move right along. I still have a lot of reports to review. Werrnyn, would you like to begin?”
The one-armed plant operations division leader rumbled through a detailed report on their supplies, their power consumption rates, the expected duration of fuel cells in the power reactor. Wermyn’s only concern was that they were running low on spare parts, and he doubted they would ever receive another shipment from the outside.
Tol Sivron duly noted that fact in his log pad.
Next, Doxin slurped his hot beverage and gave a report of a new weapon his scientists had been testing. “It’s a metal-crystal phase shifter,” Doxin said. “MCPS for short.”
“Hmmmra,” Tol Sivron said, tapping his chin with a long claw. “We’ll have to think of a catchier name before we present it to the Imperials.”
“It’s just a working acronym,” Doxin said, embarrassed. “We’ve constructed a functioning model, though our results have been inconsistent. The tests have given us reason to hope for a successful larger-scale implementation.”
“And what exactly does it do?” Tol Sivron asked.
Doxin scowled at him. “Director, I’ve filed several reports over the past seven weeks. Haven’t you read them?”
Sivron flinched his head-tails instinctively. “I’m a busy man, and I can’t recall everything I read,” he said. “Especially about a project with such an uninspired name. Refresh my memory, please.”
Doxin grew animated as he spoke. “The MCPS field alters the crystalline structure of metals—e.g., those in starship hulls. The MCPS can penetrate conventional shielding and turn hull plates into powder. The actual physics is more complicated, of course; this is just an executive summary.”
“Yes, yes,” Tol Sivron said. “That sounds very good. What were these problems you encountered?”
“Well, the MCPS worked effectively over only about one percent of the surface area on our test plate.”
“So it might not be terribly useful?” Tol Sivron said.
Doxin rubbed his fingers across the polished table surface, making a squeaking sound. “Not exactly true, Director. The one percent effectiveness was distributed over a wide area, leaving pinhole failures over the entire surface. Such a loss of integrity would be enough to destroy any ship.”
Sivron grinned. “Ah, very good! Continue your studies and continue filing those excellent reports.”
Golanda, the hatchet-faced woman in charge of artillery deployment and tactical innovations, talked about cluster-resonance shells based in part upon preliminary theoretical work for the Sun Crusher.
Yemm interrupted Golanda’s summary by standing up and crying out. Sivron frowned at him. “It’s not time for new business, Yemm.”
“But, Director!” Yemm said, gesturing madly toward the viewport. The other division leaders