Bluebird's Schadenfreude Mode

[Rawnie Tal'verda]

Truth be told, much as Rawnie liked ships, she was lousy when it came to figuring how to put them together. Most of this conversation went over her head. Without a word, she went right to the kitchen. Coffee. Home, they always provided food a drink for guests back home. Food could come later, but for now, making more coffee would not hurt. She hummed an old marching song as she waited for the coffee, then she poured two cups and brought them in, one for their guest and one more for Lorane.

[member="Doctor Azure"] [member="Rusty"]

 

[Rusty]

Wow, I just can't win today, Rusty thought to himself.

"Sorry, um, I don't drink coffee. Or much of anything, really."

Against his better judgment, he threw back his cowl, revealing the skull-like droid head. He was probably going to be on this ship for a while, and they'd find out sooner or later.

"I'm a Shard, sorry for not mentioning sooner."

After making sure the Mandalorian woman wasn't too put out, he turned back to the conversation at hand.

"The good thing about these things is that they were designed to be more efficient than powerful. There's a lot you can do to the drives without spending a whole lot of money. A friend of mine is a manumitted R2, best [bleep]ing engine mechanic this side of the Rim. He owes me a favor or two, so I'm sure I can get him to come out and take a look."

[member="Rawnie Tal'verda"] [member="Doctor Azure"]

 

[Doctor Azure]

Lorane took his coffee from Rawnie and grinned at the skeletal-looking droid head.​

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"That is badass."​

​

The Chiss looked at his blonde-haired partner and wondered if she already knew what a Shard was. He shrugged the question off and went back to the original conversation.​

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"So, your friend would know how to compensate for extra weight and stuff? Oh, that's the next question, by the way. What can you arm our Birdy with that's concealable. Legality's not necessarily an issue."​

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[member="Rusty"] [member="Rawnie Tal'verda"]​

 

[Rawnie Tal'verda]

The blonde was startled, at first, then she was simply curious. Was she dense? Is that why she didn't notice that their guest wasn't organic? Probably. He wasn't organic, right? What the hell was a 'shard' anyway?

She grinned a little awkwardly, giving a little, 'sorry. Nevermind then,' before moving to hand Lorane his cup. Fine. She could have the one she was going to give to their... guest? He, it, whatever, was still technically a guest right? Ugh. Social situations. Made her want to curl in a ball and not come out until someone handed her a rifle and told her to go shoot something.

[member="Rusty"] [member="Doctor Azure"]

 

[Rusty]

Rusty looked over towards the blonde.

"You look like you want to shoot something. Remind me later and I'll give your weapon of choice some upgrades that'll make it sing."

Hmmm. Concealable weapons might be tricky. Firesprays weren't exactly known for their subtlety, all things considered. They packed a mighty punch for such a small ship, and everyone knew it. Which meant they were looking for something a little more unconventional.

"Yeah, he can handle that. It atmosphere, it'll be the repulsors that'll get the lion's share of the power increase. They're built to handle a lot more than what the factory rated them as, mainly for insurance purposes. As for concealable weapons, I've got a few things that come to mind. If you've still got that central rotary cannon, I'd want to swap it out for a mass driver. You won't get the same rate of fire, but when you're dealing with unshielded walkers, a good rail gun is the next best thing to a nuke. It'll mash armor that could stand up to the equivalent energy blast. I can probably fit in some racks for good old fashioned gravity bombs as well. They're murder on troops in the open."

Truthfully, Rusty could have kept going for a long, long time, but it was best to start small and get a feel for how much the owner was open to.

[member="Rawnie Tal'verda"] [member="Doctor Azure"]

 

[Doctor Azure]

Lorane saw Rawnie's face and put his arm around her, giving her a gentle squeeze so she'd maybe feel better. Apparently he'd have to explain what a Shard was later. That was okay. He looked over at Rusty again and grinned.​

​

"I wonder how high the caliber could be for the rail gun. It'd probably have to be low enough that ol' Blue doesn't get launched backwards every time we shoot it, right? And... gravity bombs? Sounds cool, but I've never seen 'em before. Most of my experience with explosives has been on a hand-held scale."​

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[member="Rusty"] [member="Rawnie Tal'verda"]​

 

[Rawnie Tal'verda]

Okay. So now his arm was around her. Did that mean they were dating now? Their aggressive makeout session would suggest as much, but she'd done this before and been wrong with other men. And besides, you had to go on a date to be ' dating '. At least, She thought so. Ugh. This was why it was better to stay alone...

She looked up at the... shard. Whatever that was, when he offered to upgrade her weapons, that made her grin.

"Kind of you."

[member="Doctor Azure"] [member="Rusty"]

 

[Rusty]

"Figure like a hand grenade, but really big and aerodynamic. No energy signature to track on the way down, and if you use a nonmetallic casing, precious little radar signature."

Rusty did some math on the issue of the rail gun. Quite a lot of it, actually.

"You'd have to get one [bleep] of a lot of speed on a projectile to nullify forward momentum of over a hundred tons of ship. We can probably get something like 4 or 5 kilometers per second out of the projectile. Figuring a firing rate of 30 a minute, assuming we use a 50mm projectile. That'll hole your average walker quite nicely, I'd think. Use of armor piercing sabots or even shaped charges will make short work of the ones that it can't break through on pure momentum."

 

[Doctor Azure]

Lor simplified Rusty's math in his own head. Basically, that meant bullets. Big bullets. And lots of 'em, with various levels of destructive capability. Basically, a barrel of fun for the Chiss.​

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"So, the majority of the modifications would just be upgrading the existing weapons to be compatible with more types of ammo... And then the railgun."​

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[member="Rusty"] [member="Rawnie Tal'verda"]​

 

[Rawnie Tal'verda]

Well, at least someone was excited. Not that Rawnie wasn't excited to see the beautiful bluebird get new toys. She loved this ship. Honestly, in some ways, she felt more at home here than she did in the village. Of course, that could have a lot to do with her... room mate.

She gingerly leaned her head against Lorane's shoulder. Awkward. So awkward. Some women had no troubles showing their affection publicly. For Rawnie, it was a very private thing. Especially when it was new. Oh well. They'd already been walked in on in a very... compromising situation. A nuzzle would do no harm now.

[member="Doctor Azure"] [member="Rusty"]

 

[Rusty]

Rusty shrugged.

"If you want to remain subtle, you don't want too many extra barrels poking out of weird places. Everyone knows about that rotary cannon; it's one of the most popular features you could order from the factory. But, since it's concealed, it can be swapped out and no one will know until you need it. Anything else will, by necessity, be at least partially concealable or disguised as something stock."

 

[Doctor Azure]

Lorane smiled as Rawnie leaned her head on his shoulder. She really was cute, even though she seemed a little bit confused. The fingers of the arm around her found their way into her hair, and he gently stroked it as he looked at Rusty again.​

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"For our purposes, utility and destructive capacity mostly outweighs subtlety. I'm okay with having one or two suspicious-looking bits if there's a bunch of other non-suspicious bits that'll make things go boom. Saying 'stock' Firespray is like saying 'stock' CloakShape... A lot of people don't know you're jerking them around."​

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[member="Rusty"] [member="Rawnie Tal'verda"]​

 

[Rawnie Tal'verda]

He was stroking her head like she was some sort of pet. She bit back a sigh and just put up with it for the moment. In this instance, maybe she was just a pet. A stupid, ignorant pet. She was wise when it came to survival, but her village never had much in the way of tech. Just basic things, really, so she had such little experience.

[member="Doctor Azure"] [member="Rusty"]

 

[Rusty]

"Fair enough," Rusty said.

It was true, after all. As old and heavily used as these things were, the Shard was pretty sure a showroom stock model would be considered a vital historical artifact. It wouldn't be long before someone with a hat and a whip stole it out from under the owner to put it in a museum, regardless of whether it was part of the original run or the flurry of reproductions that popped up over the years.

The Bluebird was decidedly not stock, and if they were willing to try some new ideas, there was plenty of room to work.

"We can cram all kinds of crap on this thing. Ion cannons, replace the heavy blasters with light turbolasers, a giant mecha arm that fights other ships with a lightsaber..."

 

[Doctor Azure]

Lorane chuckled at that. His fingers stopped moving and he leaned his head on Rawnie's a little bit.​

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"Well, I'm definitely interested in replacing the chin-guns with something that packs a bit more of a punch. Not necessarily turbolasers, but a flak gun or two a side, maybe?"​

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[member="Rusty"] [member="Rawnie Tal'verda"]​

 

[Rawnie Tal'verda]

"What is your budget for this project anyway?"

She raised a thin pale eyebrow at Lorane, the thought occurring to her. Just how much did he have to work with here? As a doctor, sure, he probably made way more than she did on a regular basis, but was it really enough to cover all of this?

[member="Doctor Azure"] [member="Rusty"]

 

[Rusty]

"Yeah, that's actually a pretty good question. But we'll get a firm estimate before actually doing any work. If your eyes get bigger than your stomach, we'll trim the list down to size."

The Shard pulled out a datapad.

"Here's a potential parts list. Every known upgrade compatible with the Firespray class, along with a few of my own design. Pick out what you want, and we'll see what happens. The chin guns in particular can go a bunch of different ways. If you want antipersonnel, we go lower power but higher rate of fire. I hear there's a variant of the rotary cannon cleared for use in vacuum. It's not much good for big ships, but you've got the rail gun for that, and it's hell for fighters. You can barely see the individual beams, the rate of fire is so high.

"Or we can go the other route, put something on there that'll hole a corvette the long way, but not so hot on the rate of fire. That's the tradeoff there."

[member="Doctor Azure"] [member="Rawnie Tal'verda"]

 

[Doctor Azure]

Lorane tilted his head thoughtfully, raising his eyebrow back at Rawnie.​

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"Disposable? I've probably got a couple hundred thousand credits for this sort of... project. More, if I can somehow justify it as 'study fees' and get reimbursed by the Chroman government... Either way, I have enough for weapons and engine overhauls."​

​

He nodded at Rusty, looking at the datapad. Several different loadouts were shown, but the one the Shard had mentioned appealed to him the most.​

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"I do like the idea of being able to take on larger ships and fighters, but I have to know how much of the power system needs to be doubled up."​

​

[member="Rawnie Tal'verda"] [member="Rusty"]​

 

[Rawnie Tal'verda]

Wow. Just.... wow. The blonde went silent. If she had a couple hundred thousand to put into a ship, her clan would never go hungry. She could give the credits to them and just travel the stars for the rest of her days, only coming home when she wanted to, not when she needed to. Maybe she could take the free time to try to understand at least a little of Loranes language. And she could teach him mando'a, if he wanted to.

"And how long would this all take to do?" she asked, feeling uncomfortable with the idea of staying in one place too long. Not while there was work out there to do, credits to be made, people back home to feed.

[member="Doctor Azure"] [member="Rusty"]

 

[Rusty]

"Power requirements are the same," he said.

The chart showing exactly what the requirements for with each system. They were remarkably similar.

"We're basically trading raw power for rate of fire. Or was that the other way around? Anyway, you can allot more power to the weapons if you want, but that cuts down on speed and shielding"

He turned to the Mando.

"Mods like this usually take a couple of weeks."

[member="Doctor Azure"]
[member="Rawnie Tal'verda"]