A chameleon can only change its colour but never change its skin.

[Raziel]

Raziel’s small shuttle waited in the dark space. The perfect darkness and silence brought its own atmosphere - despite being a complete void of sensory stimulation – that he allowed to wash over him. He had been here for three hours, just waiting in the dark, his instrument panel switched off. The stars didn’t even provide enough light to see his hand in front of his face.

He enjoyed being like this. The complete lack of sensory input was bliss. The best part was the lack of any minds connecting to his own through the Force. No thoughts and emotions mingling and confusing his own. Just the echoes of old ones to contend with. In this state it was easier to try and untangle the strands and work out which memories were his, and which he had absorbed. So many bright bursts of fear and panic burned into his mind without his will, so many images of his own face approaching, a knife in his hand. A shot of pain and the memory ended. To be such a powerful empath, and to have been forced into murder for so much of his life….just another saga of abuse in a chain that made up his past.

 

[Raziel]

An egregious intrusion into his calm came in the form of a single red light. He ignored it, even as the burst of light indicated the presence of a ship in real space. He couldn’t see the vessel, in the absolute darkness it was nothing more than a silhouette against the stars.

He grunted as a noise joined the little flashing light in intruding on his serenity. Slowly, he leant forwards and flicked a switch. Panels slowly came back into life. A reticule appeared on the screen, sensory input being fed into his view to draw the outline of the Umbra where it didn’t exist in the optical spectrum.

A single message appeared on his comms display:

Prepare for docking. We are awaiting your presence.

Raziel accepted the slave request and his small shuttle’s engines came to life, carefully maneuvering towards to old bothan frigate. Even with the new Directory of Intelligence directly under his thumb, it had taken a while to track down the mobile Spynet base. It often spent time out of comms range in dark space near enemy worlds, dropping off operatives or picking people up.

His vessel slipped through the shield and entered the artificial atmosphere. There was a slight shift in gravity as his vessel altered its own artificial gravity and inertial dampeners a little too slowly.

 

[Raziel]

There was just one Bothan waiting on the deck for him, exactly as he had asked. The Spymaster position had been officially dissolved, but the command of Spynet knew differently. Raziel would work from here now, with all the information and influence of the organisation at his fingertips. He was a master at spreading his influence, in the months he had been in CIS space he had being doing so rapidly. But this was something else, one of the greatest intelligence agencies in the galaxy working for him. Well, working for the Confederacy of course, it would be wrong to use the organisation to further his own agenda.

“Good afternoon,” the Bothan spoke as he stepped out of the shuttle.

“And to yourself,” Raziel replied.

“My name Brast Fey’la, I run the Q labs, and I’ve been commanding this vessel for the last few weeks. The route to your quarters have been cleared, as requested, but before we do we need to get your ID sorted. If only a few members of Spynet command know who you are, you’ll still need to provide identification to others for access.” he said. Raziel could feel some resentment lingering beneath the surface, he’d need to get to the bottom of that and ensure Brast was loyal...of have him removed.

 

[Raziel]

Brast held up a lanyard with a small black plastic card. “Is that it?” asked Raziel.

“Oh no, of course not,” he replied waving towards a terminal on the side of the deck. “We have one of the most secure systems in operation. We’ll need a little more information.”

“Very well,” Raziel replied as the bothan pushed his own ID into the terminal and entered a long series of commands.

“I’ll need a blood sample,” Brast said. “Don’t worry, we won’t actually store any biometric data on you. This card has a phenomenally strong three-level set of crypto keys that is completely unclonable. The first can be used on its own to do things like unlock doors. The second set requires you to enter a ten work passphrase that’s combined with random data and the card’s second level crypto and used to access mid-level terminals. To access the most secure terminals DNA coding is combined with both your passphrase and the card to identify yourself. We don’t actually store any information.”

Raziel raised an eyebrow.

“It’s all high level stuff that CCS have worked out, you don’t need to worry about the details,” Brast said.

Good set of eyes, this one. Raziel thought. He obliged the Bothan by letting him take a minute sample of blood and then entered a long pass phrase. Raziel had an exceptional memory for such things. The card was entered into the machine and then passed back to him.

 

[Raziel]

“Needless to say,” Brast said as they left the docking bay, “That you should not lose that card. Give it a try,”

Raziel swiped the card against a panel by the door. The small light then turned green and the door slid open.

“Excellent, one more thing. Always swipe your card even if the door is open.” Brast said. He stepped forwards and a shield appeared in the doorway. Brast was bounced off his feet. There was a whir and a moment later a pair of floating drones with stun guns appeared. They floated down to the Bothan and scanned his card.

“Do not tailgate!” one of them said sternly and then they floated away.

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Raziel replied. “Thank you for the demonstration,” Even now he was worming his way into the Bothan’s mind. Everyone in intelligence would be trained to resist mental influence from Force users, but Raziel loved a challenge. All he would need was time.

 

[Raziel]

They arrived in Raziel’s rooms within a minute, no one bothered them on the journey. They were sparse and relatively small. Relatively. All ships had limited internal space, these were probably palatial compared to the cleaners.

“You have two terminals,” Brast explained. “Grey and Black. They Grey will work from any holonet connection and get you limited information. The black has to be on a CIS system. Even then you’ll have to request information. CIS Intelligence keeps a master dataset on three secure databanks within CIS space, deep underground. Only information that’s necessary is kept live. If you need a big processing job, you’ll need to put in a request.”

“Fair enough,” Raziel replied. “Could you show me...how I would go about bringing up a master list of all of Prototype Q’s current projects?”

A wide smile appeared on Brast’s face. “Of course. I am aware of everything currently in the pipeline, though I must apologise that we recently privatised our starfighter research programme. Did you have anything in mind?”

 

[Raziel]

"I want to know... About Night shrike," Raziel said after just a few seconds of perusing the list.

"You'll need to meet Prof then!"

"Prof?"

"Professor Carth. He has PhD's in three subjects and is working on two more in his spare time. He has no family, few friends, so he just works here. Generally around sixteen hours a day of his own accord.” Brast replied, checking his chrono. “Want to go now? He should be just getting started.”


“Why not!” Raziel replied, getting up from behind his desk, checking his watch.

“Oh, yes, time! The ship’s crew work in three, ten hour shifts. The Lab Q guys work a regular eight hour day, eight to five Bothawui time.”

“Fair enough,” Raziel replied, re-setting his watch. There were a great deal of ideas in his head for Lab Q.

“On the maps you’ll see Lab Q is shown in yellow, and the departments are numbered, but not named. Your grey pad will tell you which is which. Your pass will get you into the front door, but nothing else. More to stop you walking into an experiment than anything else. Follow me!”

 

[Raziel]

Raziel was slightly disappointed to find what appeared to be a fairly bland office. Brast approached a receptionist. “We’re here to have a little check up on the Nightshriek project, do you think you could call Prof for me?”

The receptionist typed into her datapad and waved towards a few seats. Raziel sat down next to Brast.

“How’s your Bothan?” he asked conversationally.

“[I’m working on it]” Raziel replied.

“Excellent, how long have you been studying?” Brast replied enthusiastically.

“Since last week,” Raziel replied. Brast filled a few seconds with silence, clearly surprised.

“I ask because one of the key members of the project is a Bothan researcher, whose basic is terrible.”

“You have contractors?” Raziel asked.

“Of course! We like to keep an eye on the cutting edge of research. If we must we vet people and bring them on board. Occasionally we use memory altering compounds afterwards but…”

“Prof is just setting up the demo, five minutes,” the receptionist interrupted.

 

[Raziel]

A short while later they were walked down a few floors through the lab, and found themselves in a wide open hall. An aging human with stark white hair, and a dark-furred Bothan that Raziel would put at middle age, were waiting for them.

"Gentlemen, this is Isaac Kane, and he will be joining the Operation's board," Brast said, waving an arm at, Raziel.

"Excellent, just what we need, more managers. I'm Prof. I'm a bit of a generalist, but I know all the right people if you need an answer." The human stated boldly, offering his hand.

"You are very welcome. Doctor Giusti," the bothan replied in a thick accept, before jabbering away in his native tongue too quickly for Raziel to understand. Prof laughed.

"Doctor Giusti says that Prof is too modest," Brast translated. "And he often humbles specialists in their own field."

"A pleasure to meet you both," Raziel replied, smiling warmly. "Is that Nightshrike?" he asked, pointing towards the armor plated manikin on the far side of the room.

"Indeed!" said Prof. "Right, demonstration."

 

[Raziel]

Doctor Giusti stepped backwards and turned to a terminal on a small desk. A range of cables ran from it to the prototype suit, and into the walls. He started to speak in Bothan.

"So one of the most interesting parts of my research," Brast translated. "Is that still to this day most species in the galaxy will still focus their efforts on camouflage is creating something that works on their own species. But all creatures, even the variations of humans, perceive the visible world differently. Not just in terms of the spectrum available, but how they notice movement, pick out patterns."

An image of a jungle was projected onto the opposite wall. Immediately the suit changed into a jungle camouflage pattern.

"Notice the shapes of the pattern there," Prof explained. "The long stripey pattern matches the fronds of the foliage."

"Creating a database of camouflage patterns that are effective in minimising the attention of many species at once is surprisingly difficult. Tailoring these to each environment and creating the selection algorithm was also hard. It uses a full spectral pallet and twenty key variables to blend in. Then of course, we had to perfect the photoelectric response and make the material that changes appearance by viewing angle."

"You can see why this was a twenty year project!" Prof cut in.

"And even now, there are better mimetic suits and cloaking devices out there," Brast added. As Giusti didn't speak, Raziel assumed he was voicing his own opinion.

"But..." Prof quickly defended. "This has few downsides and is just as effective in low light."

Giusti started speaking again and Brast started translating. "With exceptional camouflage, when you move, your outline may be broken, but you're still more obvious."

The jungle background started to slowly pan, making the suit more obvious against its background. There was a beep and then the pattern on the suit started shifting. Raziel found he couldn't quite work out how the pattern altered, but it vaguely followed the direction of the background.

"Works well," he admitted. "If I stand on the other side would it appear white?"

"Something that it's calculated will work well against these dull white walls," Prof replied

 

[Raziel]

The background flashed between backgrounds and the suit changed in turn. Raziel watched as the colour palette and type of pattern completely altered to blend in with each environment.

"Glad you like it so far," Brast said. "Unfortunately the military didn't see the cost benefit compared to what they had."

"Might change now we're at war!" Prof joked.

"Alright. Now let's assume I'm a Master of infiltration. I can hide behind a wall or in the jungle anyway. But a man with a life form scanner can..." Raziel started

"[Yes, yes, yes]" Dr. giusti replied, before adding more in Bothan.

"He'd like to finish the demo," Brast replied. Clearly only translating the gist of whatever was said.

"A thermovoltaic mesh system runs around the body of the suit, outside of an inner body glove. This is designed to keep the surface of the suit at the temperature of the surroundings. What this means is that the other skin will always be at ambient temperature, negating thermal vision. The camouflage patterns also extend into the near infrared and ultraviolet."

"This mesh will also power the suit and camouflage systems when the outside temperature is lower than the body temperature of the user. However, it will draw power and use a cooling system in the opposite condition. It is only effective from 0-45C though! The beauty of the system is that the mesh is also used to interfere with common lifeform sensors that attempt to detect the bio-electric signature of living beings."

Raziel looked at he scientists. "You say the military turned it down?" he asked.

"Yes," Prof replied. "For now, it's still in development."

"How many could you produce in house?" Raziel asked.

"We'd need resources to finish the project... " Prof started, but Raziel waved that away as inconsequential. "Engineering could work up a hundred in a few months, maybe more. We've got to integrate the comms system, a CIS HUD into the helmet, a few other bits,"

"Send me what you need and I'll make it happen," Raziel said. "If you need a commercial partner I'll see if the trade union want to get involved for a larger production.

The three Spynet staff members looked at each other for a moment.

"By the way Professor, do you think you could look at this?" Raziel asked. A slender throwing knife had materialised in his hand.

"It's a piece of metal, find a metal worker," Prof replied, clearly disinterested.

"Look at it under a microscope, tell me if you can make more," Raziel instructed.

Prof raised an eyebrow. He looked at the metallic shard carefully, moving it around in his hands. "Rough from one direction, smooth to the other... Like shark skin."

"Or a porcupine quill,"

"Interesting, where did you get this?"

Raziel smiled, but did not reply. Prof shook his head and mumbled something about the perils of working in intelligence.

Raziel turned to Brast and whispered so that only he could hear: "when they're ready, I'm going to need a fitting. Now, what's next on the list."