Connections: Roving Market [Open to All]

[Al Gorlock]

He slowly headed over to [member="Darth Odium"], grinning. He had no idea that this man was a Sith and if he learned, things were probably going to get bad, real fast. "Eh stranger!" He said, very loudly. "Why ya grabbin' them crystals?" He asked curiously. He laughed lightly for a moment, slowly leveling his eye's with the Sith's.

(Sorry for the short post, couldn't think of what to write)

 

[Veino Garn]

Veino watched, frowning as the man with the skull-like head walked about in his crutches, yelling about poor cafe service or who here could sell him weapons. There were a few around that Veino had seen, but they probably wouldn't reveal themselves after such a public display. They were far more secretive than the other vendors here. It was a shady business they had here and publicity meant a loss of business.

 

[Onrai]

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

"Well he was rather crazy when he invaded." She sighed. "I have no idea whether or not workign with him will be easy, or whether it'll be a nightmare incarnate, but still." She paused, giving a smile. "Well you're just the sort of person I need. I always look for people like yourself, after all. I've been designing a new warship class, one featuring some things you as former owner of the Chimaera may recognize. I was inspired by it, in fact..."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Enigma"]

Ashin gave a slow nod. There were questions of morality, of ethics, but they were not the only questions and concerns at play. And Circe had managed to find one of the few areas where Ashin could comment authoritatively. She shot a glance down the street at some sort of disturbance, but it wasn't around these parts, not just yet anyway. Not her problem at the moment.

"If you're looking for another set of eyes on a warship, I can tell you what'll work and what won't. Send me the file, and I'll see what I can do. Of course, a lot of it is the question of which strategy, naval design philosophy, and existing assets the ship is designed to complement -- a command ship, I assume? For the Confederacy, or on the open market? The Chimaera has few enough specializations, takes some design risks. I'm curious what you've come up with."

 

[Onrai]

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

"No no... You misunderstand me." She looked up, pointing at a barely visible starship in orbit. Well, not so much barely visible - it was two kilometers long, after all - but there it floated. "That right there is the Ploutonion. The prototype of the Pluton-class Battleships. We were about to initialize mass production prior to the New Order's devastation, but then everything fragmented. I did make sure it was tested against your type of chassis - there's whats left of an Invictus floating around somewhere. But I want to make sure that the vessel works. And as such, I'd like you to come and take a closer look at the design. Perhaps I might hire you on as a full-timer."

She smiled. "I do have a shuttle nearby, if you're interested."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Enigma"]

"Oh you've built it already. Interesting." She squinted up at the speck. Two kilometres of battleship at a few hundred klicks up -- low orbit, as low as you could get -- was visible, like a large asymmetric star. Or maybe that was drive efflux. "I'll take a look at your prototype, sure. All I'll ask in exchange is some trinket -- something Light Side in nature, something minor, whenever you happen to get your hands on one if you don't have one already."

Her lips tasted like salt and dust; too long in the hot Tatooine night and the windblown grit. The bazaar was starting to grate on her. "Wouldn't say no to a drink, either. Your shuttle is this way?"

 

[Onrai]

Indeed." She smiled, walking with the woman to her shuttle. "I have water and other drinks inside, so please, make yourself at home while we head to the ship." She paused, a smile on her face as the shuttle lifted off. "An adequate trinket, you say... Hmm. Well, I suppose I have such a thing." She fiddled around in her pocket before finding a pair of solid crystalline earrings. Well, they weren't solid - the pins to hold them in the ear were made of metal. "These are Force-imbued energy crystal earrings. Due to their crystalline nature, they are able to hold significant amounts of energy. Energy that can be used by you in the event that you were to overexert yourself. You merely will need to meditate on them for several days straight to reimbue them with energy."

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Enigma"]

"That'll more than suffice." She poured herself a glass of water, took a seat, and held the small Force crystals up to the light. "I love these things. Did I ever tell you the story of how I went from 'the Force is weak with this one' to, well, more? La-Reia's Crystal, it was called. Velok tricked six Masters into combining their power into it, me included. I wound up using it to power my battle meditation at a battle against the Charon, and stretched myself too far trying to mindfrak a Dark Master named Sivter. It didn't work, but it shattered the crystal and deepened the well, so to speak. I pushed myself past the edge and survived, and from then on, the Force wasn't weak with me." She tucked the earrings away as the battleship hove into view.

"That looks like some serious gun consolidation."

 

[Onrai]

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

"The vessel's main armament is comprised of five squeeze-bore hypervelocity guns that have been significantly enhanced over the other types on Subach's warships. They're heavier and have a much longer range than anything comparable. The vessel also has long-range flak guns, long-range turbolaser batteries, and heavy energy torpedo launchers - all chosen for their ability to get the first hit in well before the enemy comes into range. It also has a somewhat decent fighter complement, though I did sacrifice a good portion of its ground complement to give it such." She smiled as they moved closer to the hangar, located at the forward section of the ship with one of the massive hypervelocity guns in front of it.

"I read about Bosch's encounter with the Chimaera. He noted that long-range weaponry gave you the edge. So I figured that allowing a vessel to use almost its entire armament at long-range would allow it to deal with ships such as the Chimaera itself."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Enigma"]
"Squeeze-bore? Not a term I'm familiar with." She squinted out the window. "Do you mind telling your pilot to take a slow loop around the ship? I'd like a closer look.

"Long-range flak guns are good, very good, if your reactors can handle five times the power drain on the coilgun components, in combination with the big guns and the long-range turbolasers. Energy torp launchers draw from main reactor too. You've got a very interesting concept here, and I can see how you derived some of it from the Chimaera -- that first-strike ability is important. Up close, of course, you're going to suffer; LRTs and hypervelocity guns have glacial tracking speed. But that's all situational. The one problem that won't go away is reactor capacity. Pretty much every ambitious reactor setup I can think of will fire all this...and then risk power fluctuations, or even shutdown or meltdown. Multiple reactors will make you more vulnerable to counterfire. This ship would need an unholy reactor, something specially developed."

 

[Onrai]

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

"I currently have two antimatter reactors shoved into this thing, and have considered adding a third. The reactors are all located amidships, heavily protected by armored plating." She smiled, motioning for the pilot to circle the ship. "Squeeze-bore essentially means that the barrel is tapered down at the tip of the barrel. As such, the projectile compacts itself, the buildup of energy allowing for enhanced projectile velocity and penetration power. I got the idea from some old anti-tank guns I saw in a museum. The main guns did prove extremely effective against enemy vessels when I fired them at the Invictus hulk used as a target. Likely they'll perform equally well against Republic or Omega Star Destroyers."

This would of course be tested sooner or later.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Enigma"]

"So how are you handling the friction? You'll have to replace the main guns' barrels pretty frequently -- it's one thing to use something like that on an artillery piece with a muzzle velocity of one or two klicks per second, but a full-sized hypervelocity gun is going to see all kinds of troubles. That excess heat won't vent fast enough -- with sustained fire, you could wind up with warped barrels, or even troubles with the magnetic fields. How are you handling that sort of thing?"

Ashin took a seat behind the pilot, near the viewport, examining the battleship as the shuttle circumnavigated it. "An Invictus is a primitive ship, all things considered, maybe the first ship of the line built since the Gulag Virus. It was obsolete even when I was Empress, so you might want to test this against something more current.

"As for the antimatter...one antimatter reactor, no matter how heavily plated, is a liability. Two is something else entirely. That quantity of plating is going to make for sluggish handling, but this ship's no dancer. If you're amenable to the risk, I suppose two antimatter reactors is the way to go."

 

[Onrai]

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

"We've been using non-spin-sealed tibanna gas as coolant to keep the heat down. If it can cool hyperdrives, it can cool gun barrels. The reload rate is a couple seconds longer as a result, but the resulting what we've termed 'alpha damage' is tremendous." She smiled. "I recall back when I was first in the Confederacy, and we were vying for control of a Phobis Device with the Sith Empire. Five of the original version of these hypervelocity guns - the ones mounted on Adamantine frigates - managed to reduce a Tulak Hord's bridge to slag. Hopefully these will do a lot more."

With the circle complete, they landed inside the vessel's hangar, whose complement comprised mostly fighters and bombers. "I figured that ground complements weren't worth as much as starfighters and whatnot."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Enigma"]

"Ambitious weapons. Must have taken a whole separate creation process. My thought, though, is that you're going to want liquid coolant of one kind or another." She held the bulkhead as the shuttle touched down in the hangar bay, but she needn't have bothered; the landing was smooth, professional. With a grunt, she unbuckled and limped down the ramp, leaning on her gimer stick.

"I've been known to agree, depending on ship role. For one like this, I'd prioritize interceptors above bombers. You'll be attracting all manner of attention as a priority target, and you'll need a large contingent of interceptors to complement your long-range flak, if you expect to really handle the kind of massed warhead assault that any competent commander will drop on this ship the moment he gets into that kind of range."

 

[Onrai]

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

"The vessel can carry seventy-two fighters and bombers, or about six squadrons. I suppose two-thirds of those can be dedicated to interceptors, the other third being dedicated to bombers or heavy fighters." She smiled. "Seems like the best option, after all. This is a ship approaching battlecruiser status. Who knows... maybe we'll be able to construct battlecruisers someday. A nice three kilometer ship or two." She smiled. "Considering your knowledge, I suppose the only thing I can really say is 'you're hired.' If you want a job that won't require you to get a college education."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Enigma"]

Ashin grimaced. "Drop the bombers. You want interceptors to kill warheads and bombers, and you want space superiority fighters, maybe even elite fighters if you're allotting two squadrons' worth of space for them, to handle the space superiority fighters that the other side will be sending after your interceptors. Rock-paper-scissors.

"As for battlecruisers, well, I've yet to see the galactic mainstream put out a reactor that can support it, and the cost is just crippling. Even just the cost to maintain, say, the Chrysalide -- it's astronomical, if you'll forgive the wordplay. To lose something like that, well, there goes a planetary GDP. Or look at the sheer number of governments that have had a line on the Emperor's Shield -- these ships are targets, liabilities. Like owning Korriban or Dromund Kaas."

She paused, rested on her cane. "If you're building ships for the Confederacy, you know I may have to walk at some point, since Druckenwell. But until then, I'm not too proud to look over your prototypes. It'll keep the lights on."

 

[Matreya]

Damien smiled and nodded when Ashin spoke, already snaking his mental control outward. Diving into the mind of the Dug for a moment, he murmured into the beings mind, Anything of worth would be good enough for this trinket. Accompanied with the control was a bit of further shifting of opinion towards the object: he wanted him to think the thing worthless and beyond.

"My good Dug, would a hefty 20,000 credits purchase me that blade?"

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="D-Man"]
Mental influence and a situationally reasonable price would quickly secure Daemon the sword for twenty thousand credits.

 

[Darth Ayra]

| [member="Enigma"] | [member="Ashin Varanin"] |

Stood at the bottom of the ramp was Ayra. She had her gazed bowed as the former Jedi Master and current Sith Lord, of which was her Sith Master, descended the ramp of the shuttle and down into the hangar bay.

Lifting her gaze from the floor, Ayra leaned off the support beam she had been using to hold her up via her shoulder and rose to her full height. She too was supporting black lipstick, which added extra definition to her pale features; and she was pouting at Pandeima, aka Circe. "Are you swapping me for something more... experienced?" Her yellow eyes turned to Ashin. She studied her quietly, waiting for Circe to reply.

 

[Onrai]

[member="Ashin Varanin"] [member="Alicia Drey"]

"I... Might know where such a reactor design can be found." She smiled. "Your suggestions have been noted, Ashin. Yes, I intend to manufacture Plutons for the CIS, along with some other ship types, but for now I'll make sure not to overindulge in the event that they turn against the Republic and we end up on opposite sides of the coin." Turning to her apprentice, her smile grew even more.

"Yeah, like I want a powerful Force-being murdering me because I tried to seduce her wife. You haven't been replaced at all." Turning back to Ashin, she realized they hadn't been introduced. "Ashin Varanin, Alicia Drey. And vice-versa."