Lions and Tigers and Twenty-Meter Tall Metal Bears, Oh My

[Ayden Cater]

It had been some time since Ayden had initiated any blacksite projects. Ever since the destruction of Corellia, he had operated with virtually no funds, manpower, or assistance. But now he was getting back into the swing of things. The Republic had continued its long slide into depravity and irrelevance while the One Sith continued their dominant march. He remembered the developments by that sinister order, even when such abominations had been unleashed on the Republic rather than the Protectorate. There had been many towering Sithspawn and Vong beasts on Alderaan when he and Sarge had led the operation to rescue Cira. More creatures had been cited at virtually every turn of combat with the One Sith, unleashing untold devastation on Republic worlds.

Though he had taken pains to develop new starship designs and technology to counter the One Sith in space, there had never been a large reason for him to oversee development of new technology on the ground. Now that he was once again looking to shape the course of the galaxy, he would need to turn his attention to both the ground as well as space to work towards the defeat of the One Sith. To that end, he activated blacksite would be dedicated to developing new technology for ground forces fielded by the OmegaPyre paramilitary corporation as well as the Galactic Alliance at large. They were, in Ayden's current assessment, the ones most likely to come into further conflict with the One Sith and stand even a chance at coming out on top. The Republic was too defeated, too unpredictable. The Mandalorians, after the debacle at Roche, wanted the Republic's head. Not that he could blame them...

There were a number of scientists and engineers that Ayden knew he could depend on to keep the development of such new technology a secret, but he needed someone to give a first-hand review of the tech if it was to be successfully deployed in the field. A powerful new gun meant nothing if problems in its design kept it from being widely adopted in the field. And if there was one person he knew who could give a total assessment of just about any piece of hardware a soldier could conceivably use, it was [member="Sarge Potteiger"]. Although it had been some time since Ayden had called on the man for anything, he was confident that the other man would respond to the request and show up. After all, it wasn't often one could say that they got to play with the sorts of tech that Ayden developed and he knew that Sarge was rather fond of some of the more esoteric pieces of gear that Ayden had made for him over the centuries.

And he would love what Ayden had in mind this time.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

Ayden and black sites went together like Danger and trade, and Sarge just so happened to be excited by the idea of new toys. He was 'retired' only in the sense he wanted to spend as much time with Cira as possible. He still needed income, just like anyone else, and he had gotten so used to working that sitting still made him antsy.

He always had to be doing something, be that Cira, a project, or completing a contract.

But Ayden knew Sarge, and so when the heavily armored man stepped into the room, there was no doubt as to who it was.

And regardless of whether or not Ayden wanted it, Sarge came forward and wrapped the man in a hug. A nice, big, armored hug. One old friend to another. It had been that long.

 

[Ayden Cater]

Ayden gave a surprised oomf as he got pulled into a hug. It wasn't unwanted, merely unexpected. Sarge had always been a rather quiet, reserved individual. Whether that was simply a natural personality quirk of his, or a product of all the work that Ayden had him do over the years was not something that the Corellian cared to venture a guess on. Instead he simply returned the hug. It was interesting how not even seeing the man's face did not detract at all from the immediate recognition of who exactly it was that had stepped into the room. To someone who had known the man for a very, very long time, Ayden had long picked up the subtle nuances of how the man moved. No one could pass themselves off as Sarge and escape notice by Ayden.

"Glad to see your time off hasn't kept you from remembering how to put on that codpiece straight." Ayden grinned and turned back to the projector behind him. On it was a list of numerous reports from engagements over the last several years. Some had been engagements where the Protectorate had been involved, others were it was the Republic. Dozens of skirmishes and flash fires all came together and were being analyzed for new data. "Well I know you're a fan of product testing for me, so I figured there was no one better to call up for this. And besides, I have a feeling that you'll really enjoy this one."

On the screen, a number of vids came up, recordings from soldiers on Kashyyyk, Alderaan, Prakith, Balmorra. The Sithspawn and Vong creations of the One Sith were true terrors on the battlefield and required almost excessive amounts of firepower to be poured onto them before they could be brought down. "There are more recordings, of course, but I didn't come here to show you a video collection of the Republic's downfall." Ayden tapped one vid and brought it up to full size. There, centered in the screen, was a massive behemoth almost twenty meters tall. It was a slow lumbering beast, but it was utterly fearsome in how much fire it could take. "You've seen Grokatas in combat, I'm sure. How they operate like giant organic tanks for the One Sith." Ayden turned to the metal man and smiled. "How would you like to punch one in the face?"

[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

Sarge took a step back to size up the projector, and across the glimmering pools of his eyes ran the downfall of the Republic. Slow at first, a ragtag fleet of centuries old ships, and then faster. The pace of the war - and it's scope - had increased with time, until the last images were of lumbering Vong beasts and Sithspawn tearing into tanks and artillery, infantry nothing more than a nuisance to their massive hides.

"I'd seen one on Manaan, actually. Loaded a dropship with explosives and crashed into it. Didn't kill it, as I recall."

His arms folded across chest, chin lifting in a defiant manner similar to how [member="Cira"] had all those years. Shoulders square, stance widening, he adopted the age old posture of a drill instructor watching recruits. His head turned to Ayden, then he gave a nod.

"Just show me how we're going to do it."

[member="Ayden Cater"] had always been the thinker in their partnership, but Sarge had always been fine with that. Some men had vision, others had will. Some had both. But if you really wanted something done, you were best off getting one of each. "It's about time someone broke one of those beasts across their knee." For the life of him, all he could picture was Ayden making Sarge monstrous in size.

Sure, it might ruin his sex life, but hey... punching Sithspawn.

 

[Ayden Cater]

Nodding, Ayden gestured for his old friend to follow him. Sure, Ayden could just come right out and say what it was he had planned. But something like this was better appreciated visually. So he led Sarge down a corridor to a lift that would take them deeper underground. Along the way there were signs of other projects and experiments being carried out. Some were infantry-related projects, like body armor designs and gear, while others appeared to be more theoretical in nature, such as advanced weapon and starship designs. Clearly this wasn't the only project being worked on, but it was the one Sarge would be most interested in.

"We're still working out some stability issues, mostly from the process of deploying it from beneath a corvette. Though with some additional joint reinforcements and repulsor fields, we've reduced frame stress down to less than one-point-seven percent on a hard combat landing." Ayden babbled as he was wont to do with his projects while they walked. However much Sarge might pass himself off as a dumb brute to many, Ayden knew better. The man had a very keen mind, and could readily assimilate new information related to combat gear. What the Corellian was saying might not have made immediate sense, but once Sarge got a look at it, everything would become clear.

The lift stopped and they stepped out onto a metal catwalk within a large foundry. It had once been the secret hanger for a pair of very advanced frigates utilized by the former Protectorate, one of which was now Ayden's personal ship. Now, with several parts partitioned off for construction of a design that could be seen in several different stages of completion, it was apparent that this was the construction yard for the larger projects of the black site. One design in particular would immediately catch Sarge's eye. By all appearances, it looked like the sort of armor design that Ayden would craft for the former assassin. But there were some obvious differences, not the least of which was that it was almost twenty meters tall. There, standing almost completed, was something of a cross between a walker and a giant suit of armor. With it, Sarge could quite literally punch a Grokata. "What do you think?"

[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

Reduced frame stress?

What?

What in the hell was he making? A giant suit of armor? 'Frame stress' was something you heard related to shuttles, or interceptors. But he said 'punch,' not 'fly at and bomb,' so now Sarge was genuinely curious. For what felt like the umpteenth time, Sarge was in a lift, heading into the bowels of somewhere only Ayden had been - relatively speaking, that was. Walking out onto the catwalk, his booted feet clanging off the latticework of metal underfoot, he paused when he realized just what project his old friend was referring too.

Eyes going wide beneath his helmet, he grinned broadly beneath the helmet, eyes going wide with excitement.

"Find me a place to remove this armor, and then put me in it."

[member="Ayden Cater"]

 

[Ayden Cater]

Ayden shook his head. He could practically hear the other man's eyes widen. The obvious eagerness in his voice was impossible to miss, but Ayden could hardly blame him. "Well, not that I'm not prepared to provide such a facility, I think perhaps you ought to check out the interior of the design first. I think you'll find that having the armor on will be beneficial. Plus we just took the internal life support off-line to make some adjustments, so if you want to actually walk around with it then you'll need the suit's pressurized environment and closed life support."

Taking a secondary life down one level, they approached the towering walker's torso with a great deal of levity. It was a rare thing that could get Sarge well and truly excited to run with, but when he found it there was just utter excitement in the air around the otherwise quiet man. The catwalk clanged softly beneath those heavy metal boots as they drew up next to the walker's hull. Ayden pulled on a small exterior level, creating a loud bang of steam as the armor plating pulled away to reveal the interior. "Your feet will be locked into place in these two pedals here," Ayden said while gesturing to where Sarge would be standing. "They're tied to the walker's gyros and drive system. You pick one leg up, the walker will too. We experimented early on with traditional controls, pedals and sticks, but they proved ineffective at providing sufficient control in combat environments such as balance recovery and response time."

They spent the next few minutes by getting Sarge hooked up to the harness and getting several cables attached. The walker's exterior vidfeeds would be pushed directly to Sarge's HUD, enabling him to respond to threats from a first-person perspective. There was a stabilization bar that extended down from behind him and wrapped around his waist to ensure he wasn't thrown about if the walker fell over, or in theory if things were shaken up with combat. "So..." Ayden finished the walkthrough and looked at Sarge. "How do you feel about a live fire exercise in this thing?"

[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

No pedals, no sticks? Just like the Dreadwalker he'd designed, just far larger and with a good deal more teeth. Suitably fastened in, he pulled a bit to make sure he was stable and then gave a nod. "Before we do live fire...." he looked about the sphere he was set into. "...what weapons do I have to work with? Actually, scratch that." He gave a nod, "Just tell me how to start it up, I'll figure it out on my own."

[member="Ayden Cater"]

 

[Ayden Cater]

"Figured as much." Ayden gave a knowing nod as he started to secure the cockpit. "Controls are presently disengaged from the main servos. Feel free to move around and get a feel for just moving in place." There was a fair bit of resistance on the foot pads and even the arm gauntlets that Sarge carried to utilize the rams. While his armor might have augmented his strength, even Sarge would find moving around with the controls to be a bit like moving through very thick mud. There were buttons underneath the gauntlets that would fire weapons or activate some other system. "The walker has a system intelligence to assist with weapon selection and system usage that you won't ever care about." It took care of the heavy lifting, so to speak, so the pilot could focus on movement and combat. Any errors or damage reports would be called out to the pilot.

Once the cockpit was secure, Ayden walked off as the catwalk followed. In the walker, Sarge would feel a small jolt as the walker was moved along tracks to be loaded into a specially prepared corvette. Obviously doing live fire exercises underground on a densely populated world was not exactly the best idea. So they were flying off to one of the old Protectorate ranges within the system. Scrap had been littered across the place while scores of derelict or garbage droids wandered the fields. There were some turrets, some drones. It was a perfect place to get some performance testing done. And Ayden knew Sarge would love every second of it.

"Alright Sarge. Drop is in thirty seconds. I'll be re-enaging the drive and control system when you land. After that you'll have sixty seconds to get a feel for things before the first droids start firing. The armor plating is good and you have some shielding on it, but that's no reason to be careless. Try not to destroy the walker on your first time out with it, okay?"

[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

Lifting his head to scan the cockpit now that it was secure, he found that he wasn't actually scanning the cockpit anymore. It was an admittedly surreal experience to have his HUD shift to the head mounted camera - likely in a thickly armored hole. It was a walking, out of body experience, and he could see the walker going along the rails towards the corvette that would take it to it's final destination.

Rolling his shoulders, he waited as the walker was secured, and they were off to a firing range.

A firing range that looked more like a scrapyard but hey, at least it would look the same once he was done. He doubted anything here could really hurt. This thing had the armor of an AT-AT, or at least moved like it did.

The drop commenced, and the mechanical soldier impacted the ground with a bone-jarring quake, the knees flexing to absorb the impact before the systems truly kicked on. A thrum of power emanated from beneath his feet, pulsing like a giant, mechanical heart. Pausing as he moved the arms and legs about, he found he could hear the whirr of each joint as it moved. He was, it seemed, a tank on two legs.

Legs and torso moved independent, but your firing arc was wholly determined by which way the torso was facing. He could live with that. Scanning his weapons, he found a pair of proton cannons in the right chest, a 6-Pack of GAM missiles on the left shoulder, eight medium blasters set into the 'brass knuckles' of his fists and.... a heavy laser cannon in the sternum.

Quite the selection of death.

"[member="Ayden Cater"]. Are we trying to level a city block?"

 

[Ayden Cater]

"That's just what we had lying around at the time," came the wry response over the walker's comms. Ayden still wasn't entirely sold on a lot of the weaponry that they had packed into the walker thus far. The proton cannons were probably the only weapon systems that would stay. Their heavy firepower would be needed to tackle some of the heavier Sithspawn that had been spotted in use by the One Sith. The laser cannons in particular would probably see replacing as they lacked serious firepower needed to harm very large Sithspawn, which was the entire purpose of the walker. In all likelihood, the cannon in the torso would be upgraded to a turbolaser and the blasters in the gauntlets would be divided and upgraded; four heavy laser cannons, four repeating laser cannons. "But you get the idea."

There were a number of targets placed around the field that would give Sarge ample time to walk and gun. Though the control system was mostly worked out, there was still a bit of fine-tuning to go before it would be ready for real combat work out in the field. In particular they were still ironing out the software needed to have the reticles all properly move and display line of fire as the walker moved. The weapons in the torso were simple affairs, but the gaunt-mounted cannons could be moved independently of the main unit. This gave the walker a limited ability to engage targets above and to the side. It wasn't a particularly troublesome issue, just one that needed more time to be sorted.

"We've got a few derelict heavy walkers in the area; nice big targets to shoot up. Some are rigged to autopilot through the scrap, just to keep it from being completely boring. And I think there's one little thing you haven't found yet, but I'll just wait til you do. It'll be better that way." Ayden grinned, already imagining the reaction that Sarge would have to have turadium-plasma claws extend out from the gauntlets. Dense, laser-sharpened claws were all well and good, but they'd need heat as well to help cut through some of the shells and carapaces of the Sithspawn. As a bonus, the heat would cauterize the wounds and prevent any nasty bodily fluids from spilling out. Unless great hunks got torn out, but that would have been an entirely different mess.

[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

Sarge just gave a nod, rolling his shoulders - though the walker didn't move in the same fashion. This was no extension of his own body, and nor would it act like one. This was a mechanical beast strapped to the insignificant mind of a career soldier. Bringing a gauntlet up, he pointed it to a roaming droid and opened fire with the four blasters - even through his suit, he thought the temperature might have risen, or maybe he was just hoping it would.

The droid vanished in a puff of parts, and he made his way forward on feet large enough to crush a speeder. But up ahead, he spotted one of the robo-brain walkers, and he made his way towards it. A little number counting down in the corner of the reticle told him he was approaching 'hey, you can actually hit this' range, and he activated the twinned proton cannons.

A four legged AT-AT, mostly a rusty old relic, exploded in a display of firepower. Come to a halt, he scanned about, not sure what Ayden was referring to. Extra weapon?

His arms panned left, than right, but all he saw was four weapons set atop each paw. Frowning, he turned towards a droid firing up at him, pockmarking the armor. A streak of six missiles erupted from the shoulder at a button press, vaporizing the target before it got too close.

"You mind telling me what those weapons are? I hate surprises.

They're basically just minefields."

 

[Ayden Cater]

"Claws, Sarge. Really karking big claws." Ayden smirked. The walker was not the most dexterous thing out there, as it could not presently pick up on the finer, subtle movements of its pilot. But to punch another target that was just as tall; that wouldn't be a problem. Heated claws would cut through a lot of things, "The walker's primary purpose, of course, is to engage and subdue or eliminate enemy Sithspawn. It can target and destroy other large enemy walkers as well, but the primary targets are Sithspawn."

"The blaster cannons in the gauntlets will probably get replaced. Current ideas are heavy laser cannons, concussion missiles, or shaped plasma charges. Perhaps a heavy flechette launcher." Nothing said 'hello' quite like several thousand degrees of fire and metal. They needed heavy weapons to tackle heavy beasts. And some of the beasts utilized by the One Sith were either inspired by Vong creatures or were outright Vong creations. Some of there were reported to utilize dovin basals, so massive amounts of fire were needed to get through. Or, and this is where the idea for the claws came from, they would need more mass than a micro black hole could affect in the split second it existed. "Any ideas on refinements or improvements we could make?"

[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

[member="Ayden Cater"]

And it certainly wasn't dexterous. Arms and legs moving through molasses, Sarge swung a foot out in a violent kick that caved a droid in half and sent the halves flying. Another step brought it down with a crunch, crushing another dummy from existence. As with most field tests, the easy ones were first. The hard ones came later. This was just to make sure it moved properly and nothing was going to ignite and trigger an engine meltdown.

"I would prefer a different manner of control. This 'sticky controls' thing is annoying."