Ubiqtorate

Imperial Intelligence diagram

On many worlds, “Ubiqtorate” has come to be the name for the whole of Imperial Intelligence. The name came to light in several COMPNOR scandocs which were accidentally transmitted to a media beamcast in the Qeimat system. The scandocs themselves indicated that the authors were not aware of the real role of the Ubiqtorate, and Imperial Intelligence saw no reason to correct their error. From the beamcast the name caught on, as the Ubiqtorate sounded more mysterious, omnipresent and threatening than “Imperial Intelligence.”

The Ubiqtorate oversees all of the activities of Imperial Intelligence at the highest levels. Details and tactical considerations are decided by the appropriate bureau or branch of Imperial Intelligence. The Ubiqtorate never concerns itself with those. The Ubiqtorate formulates strategies for the bureaus of Imperial Intelligence or, as has recently become common, presents the bureaus with a set of goals and very broad grand strategic considerations and asks them to plan an effective strategy. With the exception of Adjustments, members of the Ubiqtorate never have any communication with personnel at the sector or system level. They would certainly never deal with an individual field agent.

The members of the Ubiqtorate are anonymous. They are unknown to their subordinates; a member of the Ubiqtorate is likely to be acquainted with the identities of perhaps a third of the members, and to have personal contact with only a handful. When communicating to the rest of Imperial Intelligence, the members of the Ubiqtorate identify the originator as “Ubiqtorate,” never an individual. This practice has been imitated by other organizations, most notably the Select Committee of COMPNOR. Created through a compromise, the Ubiqtorate has become an organization of surprising thoroughness and effectiveness. It continues to improve.

Adjustments

Adjustments is the most elite branch of Imperial Intelligence. It consists of agents who receive their orders directly and in person from the Ubiqtorate. No record of their orders is ever kept, and no mission files exist within Sector Plexus for these agents.

Whenever the Ubiqtorate feels a critical situation has slipped from the control of Imperial Intelligence, and that the situation is beyond the normal capabilities of the bureaus but not yet completely hopeless, Adjustments is called in to restore order. The Ubiqtorate briefs the Adjustment agent or team on the problem and what resources are available to solve it. Adjustments then solves the problem.

Internal Organization Bureau (IntOrg)

Called “IntOrg” by those within Imperial Intelligence, this bureau’s mandate is to protect Imperial Intelligence’s security from outside threats and those which might be generated from within. As IntOrg must deal with the rest of Imperial Intelligence, its agents have cultivated a highly civil manner and a strong sense of political etiquette, and then combined those with complete ruthlessness when the stakes are high and the threat is real.

IntOrg is committed to the security of Imperial Intelligence, but rarely abuses its authority or conducts political witch-hunts. As a result, IntOrg enjoys a good reputation among the agents of other bureaus.

Analysis Bureau

This bureau handles gargantuan amounts of data from tens of millions of sources. In addition to looking for enemy activity, it looks for patterns or trends in social data which might be useful to the agents over in Intelligence. Analysis also handles, examines and copies useful technologies, even developing a few of their own.

Bureau of Operations

Of all the bureaus in Imperial Intelligence, this is the one which is called the “Bureau”; no one in Imperial Intelligence for more than a few days would call it anything else. The Bureau handles the covert operations which are beyond the scope or require greater resources than those of the average system cell. The Bureau may send in a team of specialists to a sector, in effect creating an at-large system cell, or they may send a few agents to augment an existing system cell for a single mission.

Intelligence

When Analysis finishes sorting, cleaning, decoding, or otherwise manipulating the data sent to them, they pass it on to Intelligence. Intelligence has culled experts from all over the Empire. They have recruited military experts, cultural experts, experts in politics, economics, science and technology, experts in almost every possible field of endeavor, intelligence has plucked experts from universities, corporations, planetary governments, artistic movements, religious movements, the media, the underworld — they have pulled in experts from nearly every conceivable place or organization, including some turncoats from the Rebellion.

Intelligence combines the vast knowledge of its agents with the most sophisticated computer models in the galaxy to predict trends or future actions of the enemies of the New Order. These predictions are refined into reports transmitted to the Ubiqtorate. From these reports, the Ubiqtorate establishes priorities and sets strategies for the whole of Imperial Intelligence.

Sector Plexus

Sector Plexus is the heart of the information system for Imperial Intelligence. While none of the bureaus are completely centralized, Sector Plexus is the most dispersed. Equipped with the most advanced communication computers and equipment in the galaxy, Sector Plexus conduits handle better than 99.95 percent of all Imperial Intelligence communications. The Plexus encodes, categorizes, transmits, stores, receives and decodes more messages in a single standard day than most planetary communications nets will transmit in over 800 standard years.

When the New Order was declared, there arose an ambitious group of scientists eager to free research from the parochial power struggles which typified the latter days of the Old Republic. They proposed a vast computer network connected to the HoloNets, giving scientists on any of millions of worlds instant access to information vital to their research. These scientists designed and wrote much of the software necessary to support such a system, presenting the entire package to Palpatine and his advisors.

The idea was rejected, ostensibly for the tremendous additional funds needed to upgrade the HoloNet to handle the increased flow of information. The costs were real, and Palpatine needed the tens of trillions of credits elsewhere, but he also feared a system which would allow such an instantaneous and complete exchange of information between citizens of the New Order.

Imperial Intelligence managed to retrieve almost all of the documentation and software, and recruited a number of the scientists who proposed the Imperial CompLink. Using the PDVs and Plexus conduits to link the computers, rather than HoloNet technology, reduced the costs more than ten thousandfold. The prospect of having access to every computer bank in the galaxy, with the nearly inconceivable wealth of information such a system would provide, was too tempting to ignore.