Compensation: Chapter I

"When in deadly danger, When beset by doubt Run in little circles Wave your arms and shout"

- Parody of the Imperial Inspector's pledge

['''Welcome to the Imperial Archives, segment 2335. If you are seeking compromising pictures of Moffs in lingerie, please access the adjacent terminal. If you are seeking the medical records of all those who served aboard the Executor, which to save you time are mostly just asphyxiation descriptions lengthened out to save said records from deletion, please access the above terminal.'''

The following is an extract from the memoirs of Imperial Political Inspector Varris Tralen, placed here for posterity, pertaining to what has been dubbed the ‘Compensation Incident’.]

Nobody would have believed in the high years of the Galactic Empire that the affairs of every secretary, floor cleaner and valet were being watched by dreary and stupendously bored eyes; that as said individuals busied themselves about their various concerns with all the enthusiasm of a man with a feather duster being asked to assault a Star Destroyer, they were being scrutinized and studied like a scientist scrutinizing a multitude of bacteria in a drop of water before finally giving up out of boredom and going to grope his female assistant.

The said eyes I refer to are those of the Imperial Political Inspection division, a little-known segment of the Imperial political apparatus that mostly dealt with the mind-numbingly boring aspects of running a galaxy-spanning Empire. It was our job to make sure that canteens were clean, that the Emperor’s portrait was aligned correctly, that nobody sneezed during recitals of the Imperial anthem, and that nobody make asthma jokes in Lord Vader’s presence. You ever known a cleaner who vanished after forgetting to arrange the books in an officer’s cabin aboard a frigate? Our job. You ever known a stormtrooper who after tripping over himself in the middle of an official inspection who you never saw again? Us again.

For this reason I’m devoting a large space of my memoirs to quite possibly the only remotely interesting occurrence of my career—in fact, one of the most interesting occurrences in the history of the Empire. It was never reported on Imperial media for fear of embarrassing several million people, and the rebels and the New Republic had better things to think about when they finally heard of it. It was in the years between Yavin and Hoth. Vader was hellbent on locating the primary rebel base, more specifically the nasally-toned youth with hair comparable to an unconscious munkchip responsible for the destruction of the first Death Star. Kuat Drive Yards were working overtime to churn out the millions of ships the Emperor had inserted into their contract, and Corellia had beaten Naboo 23-21 at speedball. I was cramped in my office in the IPID’s headquarters in the Senate District on Coruscant, in office 102321.D if you must know, reading a report from high-office demanding which extremely mature individual wiped out the ‘essessments’ in the ‘show your assessments tomorrow!’ sign on floor 4001. Truly fascinating literature.

At about 1400 hours, my personal assistant, Weylon Tribuni, burst in smelling of Mon Calamari curry and nodding his head vigorously in tune with a dull thumping sound coming from his personal music player. Having been paired with him for three months by then, I had learned to live with him, in a similar way that one has to deal with a senile old aunt living in your home for an indefinite period of time.

“Wassup, Tralen?” he drawled in his vaguely rural Corellian accent. “Anything in your inbox today?”

“Nothing except holomails promising improvements to my clock, which I’m sure is a typo.” I said in my usual tone of voice to him.

“Well, that’s a shame, ‘cos they’ve given us an inspection job.” He grinned.

“Really? And I take it I am to be overjoyed at the prospect of demanding who left their blaster safety off from a group of stormtrooper recruits on some Outer Rim mudball?”

“Nope. We’re goin’ to the Sakmar Expanse. Heard of it?”

Of course I’d heard of it. A godforsaken patch of space in the Outer Rim, consisting of a few systems whose most advanced species greatest achievement was the discovery that exploding a fusion bomb in a planetary core to see what happens is not the brightest of ideas. It was under the control of Moff Prav Sh’mukk, a recluse who for some reason had been ordering large quantities of white paint that the time this had been happening.

“Yes, I have.” I said, answering Weylon’s question. “What’s the job?”

“Turn’s out the local Moff’s been siphoning off credits and mining ore for some reason. We’re to go in and shake him up a bit, find out the reason why.”

“I see. And they couldn’t find anyone more competent and higher-ranking than us why...?”

“You know how Sh’mukk is. By a stupendous coincidence, it turns out that everyone else who’s been offered this job has a stubbed toe, a headache, or has other paperwork to do. And if we refuse, the boss’ll put us in charge of counting prison rations on Kessel, or so he says.”

I had learned from experience that the boss always kept his threats, no matter how outlandish they seemed. As far as I was concerned, spending the rest of my career on the Potato was worse than spending it here on Coruscant, where at least I could sneak out to the Red Light districts when the security guards went to the toilet. For this reason, a few hours later me and Weylon were on an Imperial freighter joining up with a convoy over Coruscant before jumping into hyperspace, having no idea just what was awaiting us. In retrospect, risking bean-counting on an asteroid was probably more sensible.