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The Intendant-General was one of those races humans weren’t accustomed to seeing. Baron Daru, Intendant-General of the Seventh Legion Fleet and governor to this camp of five thousand soldiers is a Y’bith, the only non-human in an office composed of all human staff.
Here, the clever Y’bith Intendant-General, by his unparalleled managerial skill, commanded a department of commissariats responsible for the division’s baggage train and supplies. The Imperial Commissary was in charge of the magazine, the artillery park, the space-cavalry and aerial park, engineering, repair and ordnance in the Servitude’s hangars, quarters, forage, hospitals; everything.
Troopers naturally detested the commissariats. They were stingy, well-fed, and had warmer quarters compared to the rest of the camp. If there were portions for a hundred troopers and a company returned from a battle numbering eighty after losses, they received eighty portions. This had the appearance of corruption and did not fail to turn a normally patient soldier furious.
Baron Daru had a face such that if it were a clock, no-one in the tent would dare look at it to tell the time. The Y’bith had a grotesquely large skull, black, glassy eyes, which looked like evil stones without eyelids (Y’biths cannot shed tears, they have no glands), large bony hands, a malleable, veal-coloured mouth and no nose to speak of. His skin looked scalded, and sagged like spoilt yellow flesh.
You know what Biths and Y’biths are. One of the intelligent races in the galaxy. Human-like, but what was human about Baron Daru, was terrible to think of. The story goes: the Bith species once waged a war that destroyed their planet. The Y’bith weren’t supposed to be - they were mutated Biths, products of the biological weaponry that slaughtered and split their species. All Y’biths are like this - with their spoilt flesh, melting-fat flesh.
‘My lord…’ you start.
“Come to the point! What impossibility is Her Grace asking of me now?”
You express the order for your file to receive double rations.
The Y’bith gave a scornful look. Intelligently you add, so as to placate the Intendant-General:
‘And the three broken artillery ships…’
“Lo, lo, so! Is that all? And I suppose Lady Bocchi means for me to fabricate brand-new industrial capacitors for her guns?”
Just then, one of the commissariats returned. Gingerly, the man whispers a report to the Y’bith, along with a receipt. Baron Daru’s large, obsidian eyes gleamed.
“Pray tell, where are the hydrogen cells?”
The embarrassed deputy said: “The Servitude has no more reserves left. M. Périgord however requests that you ratify an order to divert…”
“Divert!...”
“For the TIE fighters. There is hydrazine left, my lord.”
