Galvanize the Past

[Taeli Raaf]

Togoria

It was a desolate world in a way now, Taeli thought as she arrived in system. A team of Aurora scientists, briefed on the project and sworn to secrecy, had gone on ahead while she had been in her meeting on Tatooine ... and she could feel ... pain. This planet had been through a great deal within the last few years ... all of them actions caused by the Sith, specifically Darth Vornskr and Darth Hauntruss.

Much of the population of the world was dead, it was the feat that Vornskr was known by ... the so-called Butcher of Togoria had cleansed the world with fire from above ... and unfortunately ... it suited her purposes just fine for once. She hated even thinking of genocide, but if Vornskr hadn't unleashed massive amounts of destruction as he did, this project wouldn't be able to get off the ground.

That being said, it was going to be tough regardless as Aurora had to learn as they went when it came to this. First they needed a facility for viable material and a way to make sure there actually was material here to be used. The ruins of Caross had been chosen as the location, the former capital world quiet from the death rained on it.

She had no idea if there even was a government left in the place, but she had a feeling that any remaining Togorian wasn't likely to be anywhere near the ruins.

"Ma'am, welcome to Caross Station," the lead scientist for the project said as she descended her ship's boarding ramp.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

"It's rather desolate, isn't it?" Taeli said quietly, walking through the established base camp that Aurora had set up. She could security droids, most of them actually Harbinger War Droids and a few Heralds guarding the perimeter, along with at least two layers of shielding. They had only been at the site for a week before she had arrived, but they had clearly been busy.

"We've had some encounters with a few small tribes of Togorians, but most of the population was moved off world ... if they weren't outright killed by Darth Vornskr's attack," the scientist next to her explained. "We have some promising sites though ma'am, several reactors in the city were damaged by the orbital bombardment and that radiation has leaked out into the ground."

"Anywhere near here?" she asked.

"We've established the base camp over top of the most promising site," the scientist stated. "Much of the lower levels of the city were used to, at least the natives were thinking this, to survive the bombardment. It didn't work and much of the reactor radiation has slipped down to where the material is. We're establishing a second camp a few klicks east as a large power facility was there and many Togorians were killed as they tried to defend the refugees there from Blackguard forces and the bombardment."

 

[Taeli Raaf]

"Take me through it," Taeli said, gearing up in some anti-radiation gear so she could go down to where the miners for lack of a better term were working. She wanted to understand the whole process ... she felt it was some way she could make the process more humane in a way. They were using the remaining organic material of victims of mass genocide to further a research project to develop a brand new power cell ... it wasn't exactly the most ... palpable topic. Some might think it was a violation of the dead.

"We're analyzing the natural reaction the reactor radiation is having on the material we're recovering," the scientists explained, helping Taeli put on the anti-radiation suit's helmet. "There are definitely some interesting reactions that occurred at the moment when the radiation met the energies released by the explosions, the matter we've observed have the ability to retain an absurd amount of energy and discharge it."

"Would it be possible to replicate it in a lab with other organic material?" Taeli asked, knowing that even with all the material they might get at various sites, it would be even better if they could replicate this on a more massive scale by using animal or plant matter.

"More research will be needed and we will need to figure out a way to replicate the radiation process," the scientists mused. "I'll get some of my team working on that ma'am, but for now, we will just have to rely on the material we gather here and enriching it. This way ma'am."

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Heading down into what could be called a mine, Taeli could see even more security had been stationed down here. More droids, security turrets, shielded checkpoints with turadium blast doors, she wondered why all this security might be needed. Caross Station was rather out of the way and on a planet that no one visited since the destruction wrought upon it. Not that she wasn't complaining though, security was at the forefront of everyone's mind, hers included.

"As you can see, security on the project is quite extensive, ma'am," the scientist explained, his voice garbled by his helmet. "Chief Hastos wanted to make sure the entire project would be unassailable ... from enemy forces and the rogue Togorians that are still around. The chief has been supervising the mining process himself, leaving the rest of us scientists to look into the process."

Emerging out of the access tunnel, Taeli couldn't help but be impressed by what was done already. Several pieces of digging equipment were idling nearby, their workers using hand tools to carefully pick away at the mix of organic material embedded in the rocks and metal around them. Radiation scanners were equipped to their wrists, their pinging echoing in the cavern they had carved out and the connecting tunnels.

"Miss Raaf, gotta say it's a pleasure to have you and to be working on such a project," Chief Hastos declared, coming up to Taeli. The large Zabrak was clad in a unique hybrid of armor and anti-radiation gear and was hefting a large tool.

"I take it everything is going well?" Taeli asked, shaking the Chief's hand as he set his tools down. "Working alongside the miners right now?"

"They prefer the term recycler," Hastos said, gesturing for her to follow him. "We breached into the city's old sewer system and I have to say there is a lot of material down here that has melded with the metals. The second site has been showing signs of a more advanced version of the viable material, something to do with it being an actual reactor facility to power the city. We located three such sites in the city."

 

[Taeli Raaf]

"So we actually are finding viable material as we hypothesized?" Taeli asked, walking alongside the Zabrak.

"Indeed, ma'am," he answered. "It took a little bit to figure out what exactly we were looking for, but the radiation scanners and some adapted electrical equipment helped find the markers we needed to find based on that old data you recovered. Getting it out of rock is easy enough, we just need to extract it from the rock around it like any other material ... metal is a different question."

As they continued their walk through the site, she could hear the whir of saws and other equipment further in.

"We're having to cut away chunks of the metal at a time, then using very fine blades to carve and scrape the material out of the top layers of the metal," Hastos explained. "We think we will be able to come up with a better method in the coming weeks, but it's what we have to work with right now. Were you thinking of making the site double as the enrichment facilities too?"

"No, I want there to be separate sites for the enrichment and development part," Taeli said, stopping to observe one of the recyclers scrapping a residue off a piece of the wall. "Keep things compartmentalized in case one site gets attacked we don't lose everything at once."

 

[Taeli Raaf]

"Understandable, ma'am," Hastos said, stopping as they reached the access tunnel to the old sewers. "We've constructed tracks to get the material out, just like a normal mine. We deployed security drones down into the sewers to deal with any pests while the recyclers work."

"How much material do you think is here?" she asked, peering down into the hole where a lighted ramp had been built.

"Plenty to get the project going and definitely enough to develop the power cells, but we're going to need more to get them to the level of production you want, ma'am" Hastos answered. "There's enough here to fill several freighters and the more the team works on the stuff, the less we will need for each cell ... at least that is what Jylik said when he explained it to me. Did you have other sites in mind?"

"Melida/Daan ... and possibly Taris as the planet isn't in Mando space right now," Taeli said. "Those will be our 'recycle' sites, haven't decided on where enrichment sites will be. Leaning towards remote worlds."

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Hastos continued to show her around the "recycle" sites that had been established, and Taeli could recognize just how difficult an undertaking Project Galvani was. Getting the material into a state that it could be shipped was the main challenge, and that was simply because gathering it up was harder than imagined.

Still, in the days she was there, the team continued to make strides in understanding what the material, which they had dubbed "Glow Matter" for the purposes of memos and just needing a name to call it, did in retaining the energy and how it was created. The current theory, the one that was proving more and more likely, was that when the radiation from the reactors bled out and mixed with the still molten remains of those caught in the bombardment, the radiation had fused somehow with the molecules of the organic matter as it cooled.

From that point, the molecules had stayed in a charged state as the radiation energized and twisted the molecules into a state where they could also gain more energy and discharge it. Jylik and his team of scientists had started some preliminary tests on plant and animal matter, trying to replicate the process used to create the base glow matter. Taeli was helping with that effort, mainly because the whole process held her curiosity completely, and her Force powers could help the scientists move closer to their goal as she could sense if the molecules felt right or not compared to the material that was being recycled.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

"Well it would seem we might have a breakthrough, ma'am," Jylik said, coming into her makeshift office at Caross Station. "It took some tinkering and a few long nights of testing ... but we think we have the exact method needed to make the material when we want."

"Really?" Taeli asked, her eyebrows quirking up. She had been designating a team to travel to Galidraan to set up the first enrichment facility on the icy world. She had chosen it for the more out of the way nature of the place ... and it was also close enough to Sanctum space and Republic space the place could be protected if it came to a large scale assault. They would need plenty of defenses there though. Another site she was looking at was Katarr in Republic space as it was still mostly uninhabited and would be ideal for getting material from Taris.

"Indeed," Jylik said, sitting down across from her. "We wouldn't have been able to figure it out if not for Chief Hastos getting the site at the reactor facility up and running. With the material he gathered from there for testing and observation, we realized that it is all about when the material is molten and hot enough from being hit by energy blasts. The theory was confirmed when we bombarded some plant matter with both reactor core radiation and a highly charged energy beam. The resulting matter was almost spot on with what we had been extracting."

"Explain it to me," Taeli said, sitting back in her chair to get comfortable. Jylik continued his explanation, laying out how when the material was turned molten from the energy beam, the radiation had latched onto the matter getting blown away by the beam and retaining the beam's charge within. Enrichment would be needed to actually get the charge released into a usable state, but they were confident they had the process down and work would begin on machines to mass-produce the glow matter.

"I want us to be absolutely certain before going to that stage," Taeli said, once Jylik finished his explanation. "Take as much time as you need in tests, I don't want us rushing into this and being wrong. At least we aren't starting from scratch like the War Trust had to."

"Indeed ma'am, the data they left has made our progress leap and bound ahead of what we would be doing ... if not for that, I suspect we would be still trying to figure out what viable material was and having no idea what to look for in replication."

 

[Taeli Raaf]

"So have you decided on enrichment facility sites?" Jylik asked after he finished explaining the possible breakthrough they had in creating artificial 'glow matter.' She felt they needed a better name for the substance they were using, but it was a good enough place holder for now.

"Galidraan and Katarr," Taeli said. "Remote and empty worlds, but close enough to allied worlds where they can be protected. Plus, Taris is near Katarr so we would have access to the original sites for study in the still destroyed parts of that world. I'm thinking I might want to move your experiments to a Nightshade research station though."

"Why is that?" Jylik asked. "Access to the raw material has helped our research into creating it immensely."

"More secure testing facilities," Taeli answered. "Chief Hastos has agreed with me, we'll be moving your team to a new station we will be setting up in the Iego system. It's in SSC space so it will be safe."

"Very well ma'am, what about the material already gathered?" Jylik asked. "There's enough to fill a freighter now."

"For now, we'll be using normal freighters, but we will be getting something more secure developed."

 

[Taeli Raaf]

After that conversation, progress continued on Caross Station. Taeli herself would be shipping out to Galidraan to oversee the new enrichment site and to personally oversee the first shipment of the material now. She still wanted a better name for it, and she was leaning towards Sianium in honor of the old project.

Watching the first crates of the stuff being loaded onto the non-descript transport, she knew a first step had been made now. Jylik and his team were already on their way to the Iego system and the team on Melida/Daan had reported that the site was getting up and running now. She still needed to dispatch a team to Taris and to Katarr to get the facilities set up on those worlds.

"Well, time to carry on," she muttered, climbing the ramp into her own ship. Two company Pulsar starfighters were lifting off to escort the transport while she would follow behind it as well. Chief Hastos promised that the site would remain secure and he would keep the material flowing. Thinking about it, she jotted down a note to send a team to Kelsior for stygium. Secure transport would be needed too.