Tod 5 op 11  A Piece of Junk.  (Replaces Tod1 op11, Cygnus)

No one could have known what it was.  No one would ever have known if it hadn't been for Lt. Albert.  

Lt. Albert was in charge of salvage for the Homefront fighter group, formerly fighter dock six.  The Illini machinery found it easier and quicker to make repair parts out of materials that already came from other ships, than to make them from dust and minerals.  Lt. Allen Albert, AA for short, was good about rounding up pieces of old Imperial ships to make other things, like the transport he used.  It was on just such a pick up mission that he found the package with Cygnus and Top Secret written all over it.  Not that it had any stickers on it...  nothing like that.  But the Empire likes to hide things in plain sight, and he could see that a broken food container did not contain food.  The inside of the container was almost empty.  Almost empty except for the object in the corner that looked like a small generator and was bolted down.  On the side, neatly tucked into a plastic pocket was a set of drawings and some instructions.  

AA was no dummy when it came to technical drawings and he soon had this one out and was looking it over.  It only took him a minute.  He thought he had hurt his eyes when they tried to jump out of his head when he understood it.  The instructions were easy enough.  All he had to do was pop off the shipping cover and engage the main power switch, punch in the right code and presto...  It could work one, maybe two times, but that would help.  

AA took it back and made some copies from the drawings and the unit.  Then he called Captain LaRouge.  Captain LaRouge called Sector Command. Sector command called Alliance Starfleet Command.  Admiral Rajuti of Alliance Starfleet Intelligence called AA.

"You've found a what Lieutenant?" was the Admiral's first question.  "An Imperial Call Beacon sir" he responded.  "You simply input the codes of the ships you are trying to gather together for an attack.  The Flagship has one so they can get their forces back together after an engagement, or set the thing to call in all the diverse forces in your group to gather for an attack."  The Admiral pondered the news.  "Was this one being used?" he finally said.  "No sir... it's new in a box so to speak. It has the new codes of all the ships in that star destroyer's battle group and the support groups.  They would already have the codes, waiting to be activated by the Beacon." as an afterthough AA added "I made a few copies of the thing so we could study it sir".  "And you say we took the Flagship out in under 5 minutes?"  "Yes sir, with all her fighters if the sensors are correct". "Thank you Captian Albert" was all the Admiral said and cut the transmission.  In three days our hero would receive his new bars, and go on to fame with efficient reclamation techniques, but that's another story.

Admiral Rham Rajuti went over in his mind what a Star Destroyer Captain would be doing in the first five minutes of an attack on his ship.  What kind of messages he would send and to who, what kind of actions he would take and how many... all the time ticking off the five minutes until they were up.  He did it over and over again, but nowhere in his mind did he find room to report to Imperial headquarters that a beacon he had not yet installed would perhaps fall into enemy hands.  It is possible that he didn't even get the call off that the battle was going badly and his shields were down, or that his ship was disabled, pending destruction.  It would all have happened in an instant and an eternity, so many things to do, so many undone.  Rajuti called headquarters.

General Schlagater stared at the object sitting on its crate.  "You mean I can tell any Imperial ship where to go and it'll do it?"  "Yes, that's pretty much it in a nutshell" said Admiral Rajuti.  "I feel like Corsye at Madalla." mumbled Schlageter "If we use this thing we could call them all in like a bunch of vultures to our own funeral, and if we don't use it we blow the best chance to clear a foothold in a sector ever given to a field commander"  Rajuti studied the General.  "It doesn't have to be all or nothing...  we can try it with a small force and call in what we want."  There was a look... a feeling of competence in the General's face, always a good thing for a Commander of Theatre Operations.  "Who have you got out there Admiral?"  "There's the outfit that found it General, one of the new penetration teams we sent to the Mansion sector. It's Crusher's outfit, the offbeat Fighter General who thought up the fighter docks" The General's voice was calm... he had made up his mind. "Give him a call Rham, I'll wait..." He glanced down at his hands at the hardcopy of the images of the crate as Captain Albert had found it. He muttered...  "Could have been a piece of junk, just a piece of junk".   

Mallard1 was devised and implemented.







