Star Wars: A clash of lords

Chapter four

"How did you know?" General Ilam asked as he inhaled the stream of aroma rising out of his hot mug.
"Know what?" Shyr said toying with her mug on the table in between them sliding it from hand to hand.
" that the imps would not check the dead" Ilam slurped his coffee while awaiting a response from Shyr. She always seemed to be able to predict the opponents moves before they even knew it themselves or she was extremely lucky. Ilam was willing to accept either as at this point the impossible seemed all but probable.
" Ah so that's why you invited me here for a coffee, and here I thought you wanted to be friends" she playfully spoke while holding a sly grin. Ilam suddenly started sweating and grabbed at his collar as if his pristine white uniform had started to shrink. "I... I'd like to think us as friends already, my lord. I was just making conversation. I meant no intrusion." Ilam said while finding his next breath some where just out of reach.
"Oh, General Ilam. You always flatter me with your eagerness to please, but I was only playing with you. And as for your question I did not know but what I did have were the likely numbers of their living to our dead and deducted the difference then added that difference plus half to our dead with our living bodies. This made it then impractical for the opponent to warrant wasting valuable ground between them and our remaining forces and would there for choose to continue the charge against a 'wavering' force." Shyr smiled as if to add I told you to trust me
"So what you mean is you made them want to work less?" Ilam half asked to see if he understood and half to play along with Shyrs sense of humour.
"You always seem to boil the most complicated ways of thinking to simple snippets as if you are collecting them for reference in an exam" Shyr grin grew with the joy she found in having these moments of whitty playfulness "but yes I made them lazy"
With that they both raised their mugs and Ilam added "here's to the empires laziness"
"What is our status with other skirmishes General?" Shyr asked as she put her cup back on the table. "Can we expect the emperor to retaliate with a greater ferociousness than he has so far now that we have defeated two of his top sith soldiers?"
"My guess is that we can, but the emperor is old and has lost his mind for all the logic I could bestow on this matter, I can not pretend to understand that fool he has led troops into traps but he has also led them away from our location as well" Ilam said with a heavy sense of failure.
"I too have the same trouble my old friend, but I fear more that he is not truly mad but is scheming to topple our resolve. His moves take no strategical position, but in the end the very thing we thought of as an err on his behalf may be for us to err and weaken our defensive, like that of the hiding living amongst the dead we must do our due diligence or fall to the same laziness that insurgency did and share in their defeat" Shyr said as Ilam looked down at the coffee in his cup feeling his mood go bitter and cold just like the liquid in the bottom.
"I shall not see us undone by such tactics if you are right and they are praying we take the easy road, I will set up regular patrols of ground and air troops and if the emperor has something hiding out there we will find it in no time!" Ilams passion and anger blended itself into one and all he could do was pace the length of the room to stop himself loosing control and bombing a 100 yard radius.
"General, you must be calm in this matter. Anger and passion will blind you and cause us to make grand mistakes before the emperor even shows his hand. Have patience and take your time to expand our perimeter of search" Shyr seemed unfazed by the prospect that the tactics she had just employed may have been a mad mans long term plan.
Ilam conceded the point and sat to collect his thoughts. After a long pause he looked at Shyr and said "we shall begin with ground patrols until they reach a patrol radius of 30 kilometres and then we shall add air patrols whose radius will expand from the fort 30 kilometres due west of here so that anyone watching will think our base of command is there they will fly low along the tree tops from her to there so scanners have a hard time to spot them and then when they reach the fortress they shall ascend as if they had taken off from the court yard inside the fortress their search perimeter will start at 20 kilometres from the fort gradually expanding until we find the enemy or they will secure 100 kilometres patrol radius"
Shyr grinned in agreement with the plan and added "we will have to set up a base of 'command' there for appearances and have a small force emplaced to defend it as if it was truly our head quarters but once our ground units have done the foot work to ensure no imps are lurking in our neighbourhood, settling a lookout post should be easy."
With that Shyr stood up straightened her cloak and walked toward the door. As she passed the odd ornament general Ilam had collected she stopped at one that appeared to be no more than a lumpy rock with irregular holes going through it. She turned back to Ilam and asked "you have so much attractive pieces here general, but I sense this one is the most valuable one to you which is odd seeing you have works of art that are older than the emperor, please enlighten me on why you hold a rock in a display with other grander items?"
Ilam felt judged even though he knew the question was more a compliment than anything else, so he stood up and paced over to Shyr and looked at the rock "I was part of a deployment to korriban. Our mandate was to salvage any sith artefacts we came apon. This was my first deployment for the empire, not long before joining your campaign, and naturally I wanted something for my self to say I stepped in the tombs of great Sith Lords like Ajunta Paal and XoXaan two of the three exiles that formed the sith order. All the real proof that was worth anything went straight to the emperor so I settled for this small fossil in XoXaan tomb of course I asked if I could have a stone, you know imperial mandate on personal affects but because I was a commander my superior just flicked his hand and said just don't let it rip a hole in my ship"