Lucasfilm & Del Rey have made many of the old Hyperspace exclusives available for the world!

Read SHADES OF GRAY now & enjoy!

Yes, still alive and melting in this dreaded heat! I wouldn’t mind some Hoth-like temperatures about now…

Pablo H. tells me that there will be a few more stories on Hyperspace in 2011. I haven’t submitted a proposal because I’m not happy with either of the two fics I have in draft at the moment. If I don’t get officially published, I’ll plan to summarize here some of the events in Alex’s future!

I’m Orlando-bound – headed to Star Wars Celebration V. I’m working as stage manager in the Lecture Hall/Classroom so drop by and say hello if you’re there.  I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of my Club Jade friends and excited that Aaron A. & Troy D. are conducting writing seminars while I’m on duty.

I thought you might be interested in the proposal I pitched to Pablo & Publishing at LFL:

“Shades of Gray” takes place about two years after “Betrayal by Knight” during the Jedi Academy trilogy days. Alex Winger is assigned to a New Republic special forces unit and works as an undercover operative and X-wing pilot. She is a well-respected member of her unit but her encounter with the dark side has had a profound affect on her life. The lightsaber scar she carries brings both physical and emotional pain. Will these wounds interfere with her work? In “Shades of Gray”, Alex faces interrogation, intimidation, and self doubt. She must escape from an Imperial prison and from the stranglehold that the spectre of the dark Jedi holds over her. During this journey, she learns her adoptive father’s fate, reunites with an old friend from Garos IV, discovers the secrets of the world she is a prisoner on and where the Imperials are establishing a new industrial base, and overcomes the fear that has kept her from seeking training in the ways of the Force.

The story will answer the question “how did Alex get those robo-fingers mentioned by Zahn in Vision of the Future” and implies that she will attend the Jedi Praxeum on Yavin 4.

I’m delighted to announce that my new story, “Shades of Gray,” is now online at http://www.starwars.com/fans/hyperspace/fiction/shadesofgray/index.html for Hyperspace members.  Cat Staggs has provided some fabulous artwork for the story — currently, the first four illustrations on her website are for this new Alex Winger story.

Shades takes place about 2 years after Betrayal by Knight. Alex is in SpecOps, working undercover for the New Republic. Remember Alex in Zahn’s Vision of the Future? This new story answers the question ‘how did Alex get those cyber-fingers’.

Well… it wasn’t the story I expected to see but that’s okay!

“Passages”, originally published in the SWAJ in August 1995, has made its debut in Hyperspace, the Star Wars members section. The story takes place 2 years before the Battle of Yavin and provides Alex fans background history on Alex’s father, Matt Turhaya.

Almost there… almost there…

Pablo H. at starwars.com tells me that Betrayal by Knight (co-written with Patricia Jackson) should be online in Hyperspace sometime in the next 4 weeks.  Shades of Gray, a sequel to BBK that takes place about 2 years later, will then appear this fall.

Wow! It’s been a while since I posted… I guess that’s because there’s not much to share.

I signed a contract with LFL last September. Shades of Gray was in publishing’s hands for review the last time I heard from Pablo. I may drop him a line to see if he knows whether the story met with final approval. I haven’t been asked to do any editing, so is that a good thing or a bad thing?   Betrayal by Knight needs to go up on Hyperspace before SoG anyway so at this rate, maybe it won’t appear before 2010!

Pablo H. at starwars.com tells me that LFL publishing has accepted my proposal for a new short story. I haven’t been given any specifics yet–Pablo thought the story would go into editing in August/September and might be published next year. I’ll keep you posted.

The story is tentatively titled Shades of Gray, and takes place about 12ABY.

A few moments in the life of an Imperial intercept operator
Communications Center, Imperial Headquarters, Ariana

Solv Niider propped his chin on one hand and forced his eyes open. The young Imperial communications specialist hated quiet nights. He’d had quite a few since his arrival on Garos two weeks earlier. Staying awake was difficult when the underground freedom fighters weren’t up to much. When he’d gone through comm school a few months back, no one told him there would be nights like this.

Niider stifled a yawn and tapped a key on his workstation, changing the frequencies he was monitoring in his right ear about every ten seconds. Up the bandwidth. Down the bandwidth. Routine. Boring. I’m gonna get the recruiter who told me this would be an exciting career.

He hoped there might actually be some activity tonight. Earlier in the evening, the night operations chief, Lieutenant Wahl, briefed the ops about a shipment of supplies headed from the spaceport toward the Imperial Mining Center. Niider might be new to the comm center but he remembered his orientation and the overview of Garos’ Rebel underground. This was just the sort of target they’d go after. There was a good chance that their communications would reflect some increased activity.

Changing the frequency again, Niider’s index finger paused over the keyboard. Tap again. He could’ve set it automatically to scan the freqs, but the tapping kept him more alert. Tap again. Just before the new freq locked in, Niider caught the beginning of a transmission on the channel he was leaving. Quickly, he punched the minus key to take him back down ten clicks. Quiet. Where are you? I know you’re there.

==OPEN LOG, D12
uk> 2?

The channel crackled with static. Niider quickly keyed in the same frequency into his left ear, so he’d be able to hear a little more clearly. He pumped the volume up, hit the record button on his console, and began transcribing.

uk> 2?
ct> Go ahead, 2. :::control op sounds female:::
uk=2
2> Team 1, 4 Bs just passed.
ct=1
1> Any sign of the package yet, 2?
2> No. More Bs coming my way. Stand-by.

Niider called into his voice mic. “Lieutenant?” He glanced at the monitor to double-check the frequency even though he’d keyed it in at the beginning of the log. “I’ve got traffic on D12.”

“Good work, Niider,” Wahl called back. “Anything interesting?”

“Reports of scout trooper movements, Sir.”

2> By the moons…
1> What?
2> Big guns, 1. Move out. Move out now.
1> How many?
2> They found us. Force be with… :::explosion, transmission cut:::
1> 2? :::calls again, no response:::
==END TRANSMISSION

Niider stared at the monitor. He swallowed the lump in his throat. He’d never heard someone die before. No one told him there would be nights like this.

The following information was supplied by Magir Paca, formerly the Minister of Commerce of Garos IV, and Lieutenant Dair Haslip,ai d to General Zakar. Paca, one of the leaders of the resistance movement, has been in hiding since his traitorous activities were discovered nearly five years ago, and Haslip works undercover supplying information to the underground. Both of these men have risked their lives to work toward a Garos free from the tyranny of the Empire. — A.W.

The third floor of Imperial Headquarters houses the communications nerve center for the Empire on Garos IV. Access to all but the central corridors of this level is restricted to cleared personnel. Stormtroopers are posted by the doorways that lead into these secured areas and routinely check for proper identification. Additionally, a valid security code must be entered on the doorways’ keypads to gain entrance. An incorrect code will immediately sound an alarm, and a half dozen heavy blaster rifles will be trained on any intruders.

The name “communications center” is something of a misnomer. A wide range of activities occur behind these closed doors. The men and women who are assigned to this duty handle incoming and outgoing Imperial message traffic at ten computer workstations (including its decryption and encryption when necessary). Another group of 30 operators are involved in intelligence gathering. Known as the Signal Analysis Group, they are split into three sections: Intercept, Decrypt, and Analysis.

The Intercept team’s mission is to monitor, record and transcribe both voice and non-voice transmissions. Their target: communications originated by the Garosian resistance. Decrypt handles all intercepted transmissions that require “translation” into Basic. Many of the underground’s communications are characterized by alpha-numeric strings. Decrypt replaces numbers with letters before handing them over to the Analysis group who examine seemingly insignificant messages for covert meanings. Garos’ Rebel groups have been known to send hundreds of fake messages daily in an attempt to undermine and overwork the decrypt unit. Much of the signal traffic is routine, but on occasion little tidbits of information are unearthed. And as anyone in Intelligence will tell you, little tidbits sometimes add up to big treasures.

“I’ve had the opportunity to routinely scan traffic that our comm center intercepts from the Underground. It’s hard to believe that so much of it is simply reporting the status quo as all quiet …” — D. Haslip.

Example of routine message traffic:

 

==OPEN LOG, B2
CS> CS CS respond
MB> MB all quiet
SW> SW all quiet
RH> This is RH. I have 1 S B south 2 – 1 – 0
CS> say again RH
RH> 1, repeat, 1 S B moving south from 2 – 1 – 0
CS> 1 S B at 2 – 1 – 0, I copy
JP> JP
CS> go ahead JP
JP> all quiet
CS> BW
CS> BW?
CS> all ops, go to D16
SW> D16, I copy
MB> copy
RH> I copy
JP> D16
CS> BW?
CS> BW?
==END TRANSMISSION

This message traffic, from the underground’s main comm unit (control op CS), is typical of a fairly quiet night. Intercepted in real time, these communications were easily transcribed then forwarded to Analysis for further examination. For one week, this network was monitored at a quarter past every hour on a frequency identified as B2. This network has 5 operatives in the field who report Imperial activity in and around their own locations. Op BW, whose location tentatively has been identified in central Garan, did not report in.

Analysts determined that RH’s message “1 S B moving south from 210” indicated the movement of scout troopers (‘B’ meaning scout troopers, ‘S’ signifying squad, in this case, one) patrolling sector 210 and headed south. Sector 210 has been identified in northeast Garan’s manufacturing district. D16 refers to a new channel where CS asked his group to check in. Imperial intercept operators were unable to locate the new frequency until several hours after this particular transmission.

The analysts in the Imperial comm center are good . . . sometimes. Occasionally they’ve been known to extract information valuable to them, harmful to us. We lost an entire small weapons cache when they managed to decode a set of shipping orders from Electrocomp in Garan a few months back. Nearly cost us the lives of half a dozen operatives. But they’ve also made some major blunders, including a few humorous ones. I remember one time they mistaked a discussion of varying recipes for treistas (that’s a pie made with boetay meat) for directions to build a thermal detonator.–M.Paca

 A few moments in the life of an Imperial intercept operator (coming soon)