Work Text:
Maximilian Veers is twenty years old when he sees the most beautiful woman in the galaxy across the bar from him. He makes his way over to her immediately to ask her out.
He marries that woman two years later and he can’t stop smiling at their wedding.
They have a son together when he is twenty three and she is twenty eight and they name him Zevulon. She’d wanted to name him after Veers but he’d drawn the line at calling the boy Maximilianus.
His wife collapses at her parents’ house when she is thirty five and he is thirty. It’s a rare illness and a terminal one. She gets sicker and sicker over the course of the year.
And then he is thirty one. He is thirty one and his wife is dead and it feels like his whole world is crumbling down.
—-----------------------------------------------------------
His wife is dead and Zevulon had finally cried himself to sleep on Veers’s shoulder and been tucked into bed. And he’s sitting in the attic of the house she had decorated for them, because looking at all of the stylish but cozy and practical furnishings hurts too much right now. He sits, leaning against the wall and shuffling through a box of old flimsi printed holos. His wife had loved them, insisted on getting them printed and bound in books.
Everything is there, at least the holos that aren’t framed downstairs. Every vacation, every time he came home, Zevulon’s first steps, her trying to hide a disgusted face as Zev hands her a snail… Holos from their wedding and their honeymoon and suddenly it becomes too much to look at and he lets them drop back into their box.
But two miss, fluttering away as they fall.
Veers picks them up.
The first is another wedding photo, though not one of him and his wife.
He beams up at himself from the flimsi, surrounded by his cousins.
Tiny Laurentia in her green gown, a Naboo style because she had inherited her father’s fashion sense, and flowers woven in her strawberry blonde hair. She has an arm looped through his and small, proud smile.
Her older brother on her other side. Veers had forgotten that Fausten had worn his GAR dress uniform. His own strawberry hair had its customary layer of gel, so copious it shone in the lighting. He’s immortalized with his elbow digging into Caeso’s side.
Caeso is glaring back at Fausten and attempting to loom over him. Given that he was an inch shorter, it wasn’t entirely working. He’s wearing a black high collared dress jacket and pegged pants. His hair is a messy blond mop and it’s unflattering against his oval face. The knuckles on his right hand are ever so slightly bruised. He’d still been working as a bouncer then.
On Veers’s other side, Rosenda beams at the photographer. She’s wearing a ruby dress that flatters her bronze skin. Her flaxen hair is bound up in an intricate collection of tiny braids, a Harun Kal hairstyle she had come to favor after visiting her paternal grandmother.
And on her other side is Domitian, dressed in a very daring silver suit. The jacket barely had a collar at all and the front of it cut open like a businessman's. Veers had heard his mother sniff about the single breasted shape and notched lapels. If Veers remembered correctly, his cousin had made it himself. It suits his slender frame very well, while somehow softening the angular lines of his face. His golden hair had been styled with a neat side part and gently tapered into a flattering shape.
Does he still wear his hair like that? Veers isn’t sure. It’s been so long since he’s seen any of his cousins.
He sets the photo aside and flips over the other.
It’s his wife, resplendent in her wedding gown, holding the bouquet Laurentia had put together for her and laughing, face alight, at something Rosenda is saying beside her. Some gossip, an embarrassing story from his childhood if he’s remembering correctly.
(In another world, in many other worlds in fact, Veers would put these photos back in the box immediately. The box in question would be lost or destroyed or eventually found by Zevulon but Veers would never look at them again.)
(In this one, he takes one last look at them. He remembers how Fausten and Laurentia and Rosenda had adored the woman he had married and how Caeso and Domitian hadn’t had anything negative to say about her, which from them was basically the same thing.)
(He takes one last look, picks up his comm, and opens a text channel that hasn’t been opened in over a year.)
—-------------------------------------------------------------
Text Chat: The Denonian Cousins
Max: my wife died today
Max: her funeral will be in a week, at 3 p.m. at the New Forest Cemetery outside Jestort
Max: if you want to come
Max: I know we haven’t spoken since caeso got married last year
Multiple People are typing…
—---------------------------------------------------------------
Maximilian Veers had not seen any of his cousins in person since his wedding nine years ago. For some of them, that was how he preferred it. For the others, he gave a vague thought that it was a shame but actually making contact continually slipped his mind. But when three of them descend on his house a week before his wife's funeral, he can't help but be relieved.
Fausten sweeps up Zevulon, bustling him out of the house for a bit. His redheaded triplets bounce and chatter and generally try to cheer up Zev, to no visible effect. Rosenda starts in on all of the housework that Veers had been neglecting to deal with Zevulon and trips to the hospital. And Laurentina bustles in and starts calling around to see what grief therapists have openings.
"I'm fine," Veers snarls at her, very aware that he hasn't shaved in a week.
"Of course you are, Max," Laurentia says, corralling him onto his couch with all the skill of a drill sergeant. "Have some hot chocolate. You can cry on my shoulder once you've finished it, I know you haven't let yourself feel it yet. You Veers men and your compartmentalization. It'll be the death of me someday, I swear."
(Veers needs to be strong for Zev. He can’t break down in front of his son.)
(But he can cry in front of Laurentina, the closest of his cousins to him in age.)
(She lets him lean against her and sob, smoothing gentle hands down his back.)
(And when he feels steady again, she doesn’t say a word about the wet patch on her dress.)
(Though she does tell him to “go shave that monstrosity off your face, Max. It’s unsightly.”)
(Force, he’s missed her.)
—---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Neither of his Juliar cousins appear in the army of invading relatives, which is how Veers prefers it.
Their father, however, tugs some strings. Veers wakes up five days after the funeral to a message on his comm from his uncle telling him to check his email.
There’s an offer to teach as a rotating faculty member for the next three years at the prestigious Raithal Academy in his inbox. Lecturing on ground assault vehicle tactics and advanced weapons engineering.
Having an ISB Colonel in the family could be incredibly invasive. And terrifying. And useful.
Veers despises nepotism. But if it means that he will be there for his son, he’ll compromise his principles. Just this once.
(He’s rather curious just how many people Uncle Blasius blackmailed to wrangle him the position.)
—---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Veers teaches for three years at Raithal. He lectures and runs simulations and exchanges schematics with the Kuat driveyards project group that his Aunt Neomin put him in contact with. He has so many thoughts on these All Terrain Armored Transports.
His classes are infamous for their lack of essays because Veers prefers to assign verbal reports or graded simulations instead.
He takes Zev to school every morning and helps with the homework in the evenings, around grading the coursework from his own students. The domesticity of it is painful without Myra. Veers keeps turning around, expecting to see her smiling at Zev trying to hand him the new bug of the week but she’s never there.
They both go to grief counselors because Laurentia bullies him into it with the efficiency of someone who’s three years older and has known him since he was two.
(Mostly it’s through copious use of blackmailing via embarrassing anecdotes from his childhood.)
(Veers had called her bluff the first time and now Zevulon gleefully recounts the story of the Lake Incident at every opportunity.)
His son is popular with his students. Veers occasionally brings Zev to his afternoon lectures or office hours because he doesn’t care much for the other kids in his school’s after class programs. The cadets study by teaching Zev the different parts of the AT-ST or various bits of military slang and terminology from their other classes.
(Veers knows that the look on his face when Zev tells him he has a “party favor” for him and then throws a glitter grenade has likely only encouraged them.)
(He still makes sure to track down the person who originally taught Zev that party favor means hand delivered explosive and kick them around the training room a bit.)
(Though Zev texting him “Red Zero” for immediate extraction in an attempt to get Veers to pick him up from school early makes him laugh in the middle of the lecture hall.)
He’s restless off the battlefield but he keeps his skills sharp. Veers becomes known for offering extra curricular sparring lessons, throwing around any cadet willing to step into the ring with him.
At the end of the three years, Veers is transferred to Corellia’s Imperial Training Center.
(Zev isn’t happy about the move but Veers is pleased that he can ensure four more years in which he will be able to raise his son.)
—---------------------------------------------------------------------
It’s at Corellia’s Imperial Training Center that Veers meets recently promoted Commodore Conan Motti. The man is guest lecturing about leadership on a star destroyer. If Veers weren’t so firmly army, he’d be impressed.
Unfortunately, Zevulon is not quite so firmly army.
His son comes home from sitting in the back of one of Motti’s lectures completely convinced that he wants to command a star destroyer.
—---------------------------------------------------------------------
Holocomm Text Channel ACAD-CO to ARMYBS-AN (connection established: 1033 8/12/12 AFE. connection secured: 1035 8/12/12 AFE. message receipt delay: 1 minute.)
LtCOL.MVEERS: You can stop laughing now Fausten.
LtCOL.FSINNAL: No, I really kriffing can’t.
LtCOL.FSINNAL: Your son. A vac head.
LtCOL.FSINNAL: My men are looking at me in concern.
LtCOL.MVEERS: One of your boys is ISB.
LtCOL.FSINNAL: Yes but it’s not Navy, Max.
LtCOL.FSINNAL: Besides, both my other boys are in the army.
LtCOL.MVEERS: You’ve been demoted to my least favorite cousin.
LtCOL.FSINNAL: Two words, favorite of my cousins.
LtCOL.FSINNAL: Domitian Juliar.
LtCOL.MVEERS: Second least favorite.
LtCOL.FSINNAL: Caseo. Juliar.
LtCOL.MVEERS: Third least favorite.
LtCOL.FSINNAL: That changes nothing. The girls were already your favorites.
LtCOL.MVEERS: I know.
LtCOL.MVEERS: The point stands.
—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Holocomm Text Channel ACAD-CO to ACAD-CO (connection established: 2324 8/14/12 AFE. connection secured: 2324 8/14/12 AFE. message receipt delay: 0 minute.)
LtCOL.MVEERS: Ready for the sparring demo tomorrow?
CMDR.CMOTTI: ready for me to kick your ass in front of your students?
LtCOL.MVEERS: As if you could.
CMDR.CMOTTI: i won last time
LtCOL.MVEERS: You won the weightlifting competition with your weird gravity settings.
LtCOL.MVEERS: I won our last sparring match.
CMDR.CMOTTI: headbutting is cheating
LtCOL.MVEERS: Since when?
LtCOL.MVEERS: Also, wear your kriffing pants to the demo. The speed strap doesn’t count.
CMDR.CMOTTI is typing…
—-----------------------------------------------------------------------
“Hi Uncle Conan!” Zevulon says with teenage mischievousness.
Veers tries to restrain the twitch that those words cause but he can tell by the grin on Conan’s face that he didn’t quite succeed.
“Hey squirt,” Motti says, tucking Zev under a massive arm and ruffling his hair. “Giving your dad grey hairs?”
—---------------------------------------------------------------
Veers groans and throws an arm over his face. The stupid drunk tank lights keep buzzing and flickering and it’s not helping his hangover. “Do we know who’s coming to bail us out? Do I finally get to meet your Moff?”
“Nah,” Motti says, looking alarmingly like he might throw up if he moves too fast. “One of the lower engineers kriffed up something on his current project and so he won’t be able to make it out for another three weeks, minimum.”
The only person on Corellia who isn’t a subordinate that could possibly pick them up is…“Shit.”
“What’s up?” Motti asks, carefully not looking at Veers. Probably because he’d puke if he did.
“I think we’re going to have to call Laurentia.”
Motti grimaces. “Do we have to?”
“Do you want to call one of your brothers instead? Or Piett?”
“...We’re never going to live this down, are we.”
—------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Text Chat: The Cool Cousins
Max: Do I seem ADHD to you?
Max: Does Zev?
Fausten: Zevulon does. You did more when you were little.
Rosenda: I don’t know about only when he was little
Rosenda: He still does that knee bounce when he’s getting the zoomies
Rosenda: He just doesn’t actually let himself do anything about it except bounce his knee anymore
Max: I’m still right here.
Laurentia: You don’t already have a diagnosis?
Max: I asked you two minutes ago if I seemed ADHD.
Max: Why would I already have a diagnosis?
Laurentia: Uncle Severen is. He brought it up with Aunt Lithanda twice when you were nine.
Max: Wait. Is that why father said I wasn’t allowed to see Uncle Severen anymore?
Laurentia: He said what.
Fausten: Sis, Uncle Huntyr is already dead. You can’t kill him.
Laurentia: I can desecrate his grave though.
Multiple People are typing…
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------
“You and your kid get tested yet?” Motti asks casually, not looking at Veers as he tapes his knuckles. Veers got touchy still about being accused of being anything less than fine. As though injury or “weakness” was a personal failure. But if Motti went at it from a bit of an angle, things usually went a bit better.
“Trying to find a psychiatrist,” Veers says, lacing his gym shoes. “My cousins agreed with you.”
“I’ll send you the name of the one I saw for my diagnosis once we’re done sparring,” Motti says, shutting his locker. He’s surprised. He hadn’t actually thought that Veers would actually be willing to see a psychiatrist, even if he admitted the possibility of ADHD to himself.
“No I told you so?” Veers asks. His locker closes more gently.
“I’ll settle for kicking your ass on the mats,” Motti says. He claps Veers on the shoulder and they head out to the exercise suite.
—---------------------------------------------------------------
“Am I supposed to consider Zevulon’s assignment to the Steel Talon a coincidence?” Veers asks, watching his son proudly show off his uniform to his second cousins.
“It wasn’t on purpose,” Motti says, “I know how weird your family gets about using their connections properly. I just asked the Commandant about him once or twice. Checking in on my honorary nephew, you know?”
—------------------------------------------------------------------
Text Chat: The Cool Cousins
Max: Everything’s fine, Laurentia.
Fausten: I’m looking through your report on Zaloriis right now.
Max: How the kark did you get that? It’s classified!
Fausten: Unimportant.
Max: It was Uncle Blasius wasn’t it.
Fausten: Max. That is very kriffing unimportant. My question for you?
Fausten: Very important.
Fausten: When were you going to tell us you got captured and tortured by rebels?
Fausten: Before being rescued by and finishing your new walker prototype with Darth fucking Vader???
Max: It wasn’t that bad.
Rosenda: Maximilian Aueralius Veers!
Rosenda: You were tortured?
Laurentia: And you weren’t going to say anything?
Max: I’m talking to that therapist still.
Laurentia: Good.
Laurentia: But the next time something like this happens I want to hear from you personally, you understand me?
Laurentia: Or I’ll tell Conan about the Sledding Incident from when you were seven.
Max: Why are you calling him Conan?
Laurentia: Am I understood, Maximilian Aueralius?
Max: Yes Laurie.
—----------------------------------------------------------------
Three officers from the army contingent of the Steel Talon crash into the water beside Veers. Motti watches Veers twitch as the cold water touches his face and hair. His eyes go briefly glassy. Panicked.
And that. That’s new. Veers likes cold water.
Motti and his brothers had tagged along with Veers and his son once when they’d done a white water rafting trip on Seswenna right before Zevulon joined Denon’s officer prep school that Motti could never remember the name of. Veers had, every single day of the trip, jumped out of the raft and into the cold river after they had passed the last of the rapids for the stretch. And he’d laid on his back, floating because of the life preserver. He had hooked a hand in the rope of the raft and let himself be tugged along in the freezing water by the current and the forward momentum of the raft for hours.
But he flinched. Just now.
Not when he got in. But when the water touched his face.
Fuck.
“Veers!” he barks. “Why the kriff are you in the pool?”
Veers blinks out of his brief terror, snapped out of it by confusion. It had been Motti’s idea to go swimming. A race, to see who could do four laps of the pool the quickest.
Motti sighs, doing his best to look aggrieved, and tries to drag Veers out of the pool. Once he realizes what Motti’s doing, Veers helps haul himself out.
‘Tell me next time if you don’t want the water cold,” he gripes, pulling Veers over to the hot tub and bullying him down the steps.
He accidently splashes Veers in the face as he gets in himself. Fuck.
But then he looks again and Veers seems calm. Fine. No glassy eyed freak out.
Just cold water then.
Got it.
(Motti messages Thrawn later and gets sent a report on what had really happened when Veers had been out of contact for a week and a half on Zaloriis.)
(No physical injuries, the report says. No need for psychological counseling, the report says.)
(Waterboarding, the report says.)
(Motti has to hassle his engineers and his training room managers to get the pools warmed.)
(But frankly, it’s a rather nice change if he decides to go for a swim before his shift.)
(And if Veers looks quietly relieved a day later, when he arrives for their scheduled rematch, to find the water of the main pool slightly warm, Motti doesn’t mention it.)
—---------------------------------------------------------
“Motti!” A familiar voice calls to him, shakes his shoulder lightly. “Motti!”
He wakes up to Veers leaning over him, mud down the front of his uniform. There’s a blue sky behind him and it’s jarring when Motti’s pretty sure he passed out in an escape pod.
“Good,” Veers says, sounding relieved. “You’re alive.”
“Where?” Motti rasps. There’s more he wants to ask but his head is pounding and any other words would probably make him puke.
“Yavin.” Veers isn’t looking at him anymore, has a hand on a blaster that’s not imperial make. He’s scanning the trees around them. Wary. Watching for something.
“The Death Star?”
“Gone, presumably, since I found you in an escape pod and the planet's still here,” Veers says, pulling a canteen in rebel orange out and unscrewing the cap. He gently helps Motti sit up and have a few sips.
“Fuck.”
“Told you Thrawn’s Defenders were a better investment,” Veers says, trying to be teasing but not quite managing it because of the wary tension in his voice.
“Oh kriff off.”
Veers meets his eyes more fully. There’s an apology there, Motti thinks. Veers has put in as much work on his walkers as Motti had the Death Star and he understands just how devastating having that effort lost so easily is.
“What happened to you?” Motti asks, eyeing Veers. It’s not just mud on him. There’s blood on his gloves and a little in his hair. He’s missing his hat and he’s definitely not in armor, which rules out a deliberate rescue mission. “Thought you were supposed to be stationed on the Death Star?”
“Didn’t even make it,” Veers says, giving Motti a rueful look. “Arrived in the middle of the battle and got shot down. I’ve been dodging rebel patrols for the last two days.”
“You didn’t comm the fleet?”
“Mine broke in the crash and the one in the shuttle got slagged.”
Motti finally takes a proper look around and notices the destroyed escape pod behind them. “Why are we still here?” he demands. Seriously, right next to an imperial escape pod? Where the rebels would definitely check? He’d thought Veers smarter than that but clearly his habit of headbutting people had destroyed his brain.
Veers gives him a look of chilly offense. “Your escape pod’s comm is still partially functional. I was going to modify it to call the fleet. But I found you before I could start and you’ve got a bad enough head wound that I didn’t want to risk moving you unconscious.”
Huh.
Guess the army is good for something after all.
—--------------------------------------------------------------------
“Ow,” Veers says, blinking up at the infirmary ceiling. He’d been on a mission a few moments ago, hadn’t he? Something about rebels? And Hoth?
“Dumbass,” Motti says, slapping his shoulder and making him hiss as a previously undiscovered ache makes itself known. “Do you know how worried your son and Piett have been? Or kriff, your cousins? They’ve been messaging me for updates for days!”
“Uncle Blasius died last year. He was how they got all of their rather invasive medical updates prior to that,” Veers mumbles, eyes sliding shut again.
Motti prods him in the shoulder, a little to the left of his apparent shoulder wound. “Don’t go to sleep, asshole.”
Veers squints at him. And then, because he is apparently on the very good painkillers, he says, “You were worried.”
Spluttering, Motti says, “I was not kriffing worried! Why would I be worried about the idiot kriffer who lost his legs playing Piett’s stupid Axxilaan Chicken with a rebel snowspeeder?!”
Veers is pretty sure that should be alarming information. He’ll probably have a massive internal meltdown about it later and make his therapist pull out words like “regression” and “unhealthy coping mechanisms” again.
For now though, with heavy painkillers fuzzing his mind, the only thing he can think to say is, “Is that why I can’t feel my toes?”
Motti looks like he wants to throttle Veers. Telling him that Veers is pretty sure Vader has first dibs does not improve matters.
—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Holocomm Text Channel SSD-EX to ISD-ST (connection established: 1847 5/31/22 AFE. connection secured: 1849 5/31/22 AFE. message receipt delay: 1 minute.)
GEN.MVEERS: Why did you just send me files for three different cybernetics specialists with your moff’s assessments of their skill in them with the instructions to choose one?
ADM.CMOTTI: I know the army isn’t known for reading comprehension
ADM.CMOTTI: but i’m pretty sure you just said why i sent you the files
GEN.MVEERS: The emperor said he was in the process of arranging the honor of being seen by the same prosthesis expert as Lord Vader.
ADM.CMOTTI: Veers
ADM.CMOTTI: do you really think i’d let you see the same doctor that works on that wheezy tin can?
GEN.MVEERS: Did you really just call Lord Vader a wheezy tin can over monitored official channels?
ADM.CMOTTI: and i’d do it again
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Veers picks up Motti’s comm call immediately, even though Motti’s pretty sure it’s 3 a.m. on the Executor.
Motti knows his breathing is stuttery and panicky but he can’t get calm enough to form words. Sweat is sticking to his skin, his sheets are tangled up in his legs and he can’t kriffing breathe and Tiaan is comms dark right now because they don’t want to risk the rebels finding the second Death Star until at last the main weapon is online and-
“Get an ice cube,” Veers says and it’s a calm command. Normally Motti would balk at it, especially from Veers, but he’s too shaky right now and Veers sounds like the world imploding right that second wouldn’t perturb him. Like if it did, he’d find some way to bull his way right through it and drag everyone else around with him.
“Do you have it?” Veers asks as Motti fumbles with the door of his conservator. Motti flicks the comm to a holographic call and Veers assesses him like he would an injured trooper under his command. “Slow down. Get your fingers around the handle. Good. Open it. Good. Pull out a cube.”
Motti grunts, the cold ice cube beginning to melt unpleasantly in his hand. He’s very aware of the sensation suddenly.
“Put it in your mouth and hold it against the roof with your tongue.”
He does as he’s told, baffled.
“Good. Now. The rules of Denonian wrestling differ from those of Seswenna in the following ways…”
(It isn’t til he’s gone through three ice cubes in the same way that he realizes he’s breathing normally again, that his thoughts aren’t racing anymore, and he can think of things other than all the souls that didn’t make it off the first death star and his fear that something will go wrong with the second but this time Tiaan won’t make it off.)
(Veers, who had expounded at length about Denonian wrestling and had since moved into lecturing on the evolution of sword forms throughout Denon’s military history, notes this with sharp eyes.)
(But he doesn’t stop talking.)
(Lets Motti pretend that the only reason he called is because he wanted to hear about the removal of shields from the standard equipment Denon’s royal guard during the Age of Mourning due to the switch from one handed swords to blades that could be wielded by both a one and two handed grip.)
(And Motti may start asking questions somewhere in there.)
(Hey, it’s kinda interesting. Sue him.)
—------------------------------------------------------------------
Holocomm Text Channel ARMYBS-EN to ISD-ST (connection established: 0917 7/24/23 AFE. connection secured: 0923 7/24/23 AFE. message receipt delay: 7 minutes.)
GEN.MVEERS: I fucking hate it here.
ADM.CMOTTI: shouldn’t have been army if you didn’t want to deal with trees
GEN.MVEERS: It's not the trees.
GEN.MVEERS: It’s the carnivorous tree bears.
GEN.MVEERS: And the general incompetence. Who let General Yalis run an academy?
GEN.MVEERS: But mostly it’s the carnivorous tree bears.
ADM.CMOTTI: you’re making that up
GEN.MVEERS: [Image Attached: This Kriffer Tried To Eat Selzen’s Face.hol]
ADM.CMOTTI is typing…
—------------------------------------------------------------
Holocomm Text Channel ARMYBS-EN to ISD-ST (connection established: 1026 7/27/23 AFE. connection secured: 1033 7/27/23 AFE. message receipt delay: 7 minutes.)
GEN.MVEERS: The rebels are allied with the tree bears.
ADM.CMOTTI: what the kriff veers
ADM.CMOTTI: veers
ADM.CMOTTI: veers answer me damn it
—--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Holocomm Text Channel SSD-EX to ISD-ST (connection established: 1602 7/27/23 AFE. connection secured: 1607 7/27/23 AFE. message receipt delay: 2 minutes.)
GEN.MVEERS: Sorry. Princess Organa stabbed me in the shoulder with one of the tree bear spears before I managed to shoot her.
GEN.MVEERS: I just managed to steal my datapad back from the medics.
GEN.MVEERS: Also, why do we bother making Death Stars if they’re just going to blow up in a few days?
ADM.CMOTTI: now who’s asking dangerous questions in monitored channels
GEN.MVEERS: I may be a little concussed. I headbutted a wookie.
ADM.CMOTTI: how the kark do things like this keep happening to you?
ADM.CMOTTI: also, you were supposed to be protecting the shield generator to stop it from blowing it up
GEN.MVEERS: I did!
GEN.MVEERS: It blew up anyway.
ADM.CMOTTI: HOW THE KARK DID IT BLOW UP ANYWAY???
GEN.MVEERS: I caught Skywalker, Jerjerrod handed him over to Vader and then stayed to beef up the security a little because we’re… not entirely sure how Skywalker ended up on planet.
GEN.MVEERS: Your boyfriend is very twitchy, by the way. He says hi.
GEN.MVEERS: And then Vader took Skywalker up to it, and the jedi apparently did something, because the Emperor and Vader are both dead.
GEN.MVEERS: And the Death Star Exploded. Again.
ADM.CMOTTI is typing…
—--------------------------------------------------------
“We’re really negotiating with the Rebels?” Veers asks Piett, his right arm in a sling and propped up against on a number of pillows.
“We have to,” Piett says, grim. “Endor wasn’t a total loss but with the Emperor and Lord Vader dead, not to mention a second death star destroyed, it certainly wasn’t a victory. Thrawn’s going to have enough to do as Supreme Commander of the Empire in putting down the different moffs and admirals who have a right to the throne without fighting the rebellion on top of it.”
“Is that what he’s calling himself?” Veers asks, scrolling through the list of preliminary negotiating points Thrawn had sent him. He can’t read more than two points at a time and he can’t take his meds again until the doctor takes him off the damn painkillers for his arm. It’s annoying. The physical therapy is going to suck.
“He was ranked beneath Vader and Vader was supreme commander of the navy,” Piett says, making notes on his own datapad. “And people who would balk at an alien emperor don’t seem as bothered by this so…”
“Motti replaced him as Grand Admiral?” Veers asks. He switches to trawling through his emails. Casualty reports from Endor, the repairs necessary to the AT-STs after that stupid log technique, the confirmed escape of Han Solo, suggestions from Covall about who to nominate for various awards and who to promote…
“Mhm.” Piett sips his caf. “Supreme Naval Authority as well.”
He catches the look Veers sends him. “Thrawn basically just renamed the position of the supreme commander of the navy and army because we thought it might be too confusing if he’s going by supreme commander of the empire.”
“Who’s the army one?”
“Someone called Sabas Zoryla?” Piett says hesitantly, checking his pad.
“Good choice. The grand general’s intelligent and dependable,” Veers says, searching for communication from him specifically. “He says I’m not going to the negotiations.”
“It was thought to be in bad taste,” Piett says delicately.
“Because of the Butcher thing?”
“And the ‘Massacre at Endor’.”
“Seriously.”
Piett nods, flipping his pad around to show a soundless propaganda holovid with something that’s clearly supposed to be him but is really just a tall man in a bad dye job. “Despite you taking half of the rebel landing force prisoner. They’re proving to be an excellent bargaining chip in negotiations.”
“I even left most of the stupid stabby bears alive!”
“Covell will have words with you for that.”
Veers raises an eyebrow at him.
“One stabbed him in the thigh.”
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“Maximilian Aueralius Veers!”
“Oh fuck,” Veers mutters, spotting Rosenda weaving through the doctor and nurses in the hallway leading to Veers’s room. Her flaxen curls quiver indignantly in their coiffure and if she hadn’t inherited her father’s rich brown complexion, her cheeks would likely be flushed with temper.
“Forget to tell them you’d gotten stabbed?” Motti asks, watching with amusement as Veers straightens.
“How did they even get on the Executor?” he says instead of answering, because yes. Yes he had.
“Your dear friend Firmus was kind enough to allow us on, once Fausten asked. And of course, once your darling son told us about your stab wound.” Laurentia bustles up to his bedside and deposits a load of her very pretty ‘I am displeased with you and you will know it’ flowers into the vase on the table there.
She had been, during her tenure as Lajesen University’s botany professor, given a research grant to see if she could engineer a flower that only smelled to someone from a specific planet. Something about the genetic adaptations of odor receptors in the nose and designing a scent that only targeted ones unique to certain worlds. Veers hadn’t fully understood the science behind it.
It had been successful, though only with the smell of a corpse flower and only on with a few select planets.
Denon was unfortunately one of them.
Motti gives him an odd look when he twitches at the scent of the orange and yellow blooms.
“We’ve been ever so worried,” Laurentia continues
“Fausten,” Veers says sheepishly as his cousin marches up, strawberry blond hair gelled back to its most severe and dressed in a very sharp uniform.
“General Veers,” his cousin says, saluting him with perfect form. Fausten is the kind of person who only uses formality with people he’s pissed with. His career had lagged a near decade behind despite being seven years older than Veers because of it.
He stares Veers down and holds it until Veers salutes him back with the uninjured hand.
“How do these things always happen to you, Maximilian?” Rosenda cries, settling on the end of his bed. “Fausten doesn’t have these problems! Neither does your son!”
“Or dear Conan,” Laurentia says, patting at Motti’s hand. Motti gives Veers a startled look over her head. Laurentia was the only one of his cousins to not inherit the Juliar family height, a fact firmly blamed on her 5’4” father. “He has his life together.”
There’s a wheeze from the door. Piett’s lips are trembling with mirth as he hangs back, watching Veers be mobbed by his cousins. Veers gives him a dirty look.
“Oh yes!” Rosenda says, nodding along. She is entirely in earnest. Her hands are even doing that clasping thing that means she utterly means what she’s saying. “Such a rational man. He doesn’t get himself into these ridiculous situations like you, Max.”
“What?” Veers asks weakly. Motti is gaping openly beside him. The doctor is starting to eye Piett’s wheezing with concern.
“Zaloriis, Max,” Laurentia says impatiently.
“Hoth,” Fausten adds in. “Endor. Culroon III.”
“I-”
“Precisely!” Rosenda cries, hands held out to Veers entreatingly. “Why can’t you be more like Conan, Max?”
Motti and Veers stare at her, dumbfounded.
Piett starts cackling.
(“Now,” Laurentia says, after Piett has been thoroughly coddled by her and Rosenda for what they thought was an impending bout of hysteria, “Conan.”
Motti stiffens slightly. He very nearly comes to attention at the weight of authority and danger in her voice. “Yes, ma’am?”
“I told you to call me Laurie, Conan,” she says, mildly scolding. “Now. How would you like to hear about the time Max broke his foot sledding when he was seven? It involves a snowman, two gallons of magenta paint, a cayzyl bush, and a Denonian warhawk…”)
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“This is your karking fault,” Motti says, staring at the confirmation from Thrawn that yes the image they had sent him was in fact a grysk warship.
“How is this possibly my fault?” Veers asks. His hands are folded behind his back as he eyes the same ship through the viewport of the Steel Talon’s bridge. It’s karking aggravating.
“This sort of shit doesn’t happen to me unless you’re around.” Veers gives him a side eye for this. Which isn’t fair. The blond idiot stumbles into situations. Motti is self aware enough to know that he causes most of his situations. That’s entirely different and usually results in a minor diplomatic scandal that Tiaan and his Council of the Grand Moffs has to smooth over. Not accidentally stumbling head first into rebel cells, carnivorous tree bears, and apparently, impending karking wars.
Veers doesn’t respond for a long moment. Motti considers the case closed until Veers says, “Is that ship charging its turbolasers?”
The salvo that rocks the Steel Talon moments later proves that yes, yes it had been.
(The six other grysk ships that drop out of hyperspace after that are just icing on the kriffing cake, at this point.)
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Holocomm Text Channel CIVRES-MV to ISD-ST (connection established: 1304 4/1/28 AFE. connection secured: 1312 4/1/28 AFE. message receipt delay: 2 minutes.)
GEN.MVEERS: So your title of Uncle Conan may not stay honorary. Zevulon apparently took your nephew Eamon out on a date yesterday.
GrandADM.CMOTTI: that’s not funny veers
GEN.MVEERS: What? Oh. April Fool’s Day.
GEN.MVEERS: I’m not joking.
GEN.MVEERS: [Image Attached: He Walked Out of Zev’s Room and Clearly Didn’t See Me Sitting In The Kitchen When He First Entered.hol]
GEN.MVEERS: [Image Attached: Didn’t Know a Motti Could Blush.hol]
GrandADM.CMOTTI: for fuck’s sake, eamon
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Holocomm Text Channel ISD-ST to SSD-EX (connection established: 1034 8/17/30 AFE. connection secured: 1035 8/17/30 AFE. message receipt delay: 1 minute.)
GrandADM.CMOTTI: brace yourself. tiaan’s on a warpath
GrandGEN.MVEERS: Shit.
GrandGEN.MVEERS: Wait, why?
GrandADM.CMOTTI: your boy and eamon said they were waiting til after the war to get married
GrandADM.CMOTTI: ti’s in full wedding planning mode
GrandGEN.MVEERS: The treaty was signed yesterday.
GrandADM.CMOTTI: you really think he hasn’t been planning since they started dating?
GrandGEN.MVEERS: And there’s no heading him off?
GrandADM.CMOTTI: nope
GrandADM.CMOTTI: boys should be glad i talked him out of streaming it galactically “for the morale”
GrandGEN.MVEERS: Force. Alright.
GrandGEN.MVEERS: I’ll send him a document on Denon’s traditions later.
GrandGEN.MVEERS: Someone should warn the boys.
GrandADM.CMOTTI: already have
GrandADM.CMOTTI: they’re hiding behind domhnall
GrandADM.CMOTTI: and you i guess
GrandADM.CMOTTI: since you’ve thrown yourself to the wolves a little bit by giving him the traditions document
GrandADM.CMOTTI: he’ll want all the details
GrandADM.CMOTTI: all of them