New Age

[Laira Darkhold]

I nodded at the men and women standing in the room. They had good test models and simulations ran, but that was nothing compared to an actual working model. “Hypori it is then. I want a working prototype made immediately so that I can begin live tests on the system.” Live tests almost never worked out like a simulated version. It was just the nature of technological advancement. Everything should work fine and exactly how you predicted, but something always inevitably went differently than you had planned when working on projects like this.

“Yes sir, we will put requisition orders for space and supplies in immediately. We need to have parts and equipment fabricated in order to begin work on a prototype, and we have to have the SLD-26 shipped to Hypori so that we can tear it apart and fully analyze the system.” They seemed upbeat. Perhaps it was the success so far that had them optimistic, but the real hard stuff was still on its way. They hadn’t even really gotten good and started yet. Once they realized I would be joining them on Hypori they would probably settle in for the long haul.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Hypori: ArmaTech Corporate City

The corvette landed, maybe an hour behind the shuttles that had delivered the engineers to work on this project. The Administration Tower where the R and D department always hid was too small for the SLD-26 unit and so they had to be shuffled to a secure sector of the city. More guards and droids patrolled the area than usual and there were even members of Clan Vereen stuck around and staying in the area as added security and protection. Most of it was probably too much, but it was always better to be cautious than unexpectedly need the extra security and not have it.

“Keep a few of the boys close by. I don’t think we will need them, but it wasn’t so long ago that Hypori got hit.” I reminded the warriors walking close behind me. There were a number of guards who opened the doors for me as I walked into the warehouse that had been appropriated for a system of this size. I looked over the crew of engineers and laborers. “How is it coming along boys and girls?” I asked them as I peered over the balcony, observing the skeletons of their work.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

The few engineers looked up. It was obvious through the surprise in their auras and the startled look they all were wearing that they hadn’t expected to see me here so soon. It had only been about an hour since they had settled into the warehouse, and really they hadn’t begun any of the real work since they had spoken with me on Bothawui. “Uh, we are just getting started pulling the shield projector apart. There isn’t much more beyond that we can do until parts are fabricated.” The chief engineer said as he started making his way up the stairs to the balcony I was currently viewing their work from. He was a frail, at least by comparison. A geek really.

I smiled down at him as we walked up the steps as though he wanted to speak with me privately. “As soon as you send three dimensional models to the shop they will run those parts through and start getting them sent out to you.” Basically a nice way of saying everyone is waiting on you, hurry up and build the thing so we can all move on with our lives.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

“Yes sir, we are preparing the models to send to them as we speak, but some of us were hoping to get our hands into the shield projector while we were waiting.” He said as he arrived up beside me, facing me as though he expected to be given step by step instructions, or as though he was trying to confront me.

“Well, then please continue.” I said with a smile directed at the engineers below. “Don’t expect me to be able to tell you how to proceed.” I said smiling and jovial. I could feel them happily returning to work. I turned to the chief engineer and looked down at him. “Well, you obviously want to talk about something, or did you think I needed something?” I said, looking him over, sizing him up through the Force.

“I just wasn’t aware you would be overseeing this operation directly. I had thought we would have some time between presentations is all.” He said, stammering out a reply. He knew he was replaceable, good. Fortunately for him he was competent and was unaware of how much weight he could actually through around.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

“Ah, that is where you are mistaken. I am not expecting a presentation. I am here to give you that sense of urgency that drives you to meet deadlines.” I retorted to the man, the sound of welders and a tools keeping the conversation private.

He looked at his datapad reflexively, like it would have the answers he needed. “I wasn’t aware we had a deadline. There isn’t one on the requisition forms.” He said, scrolling to find the proof he needed to clear his conscience.

“Oh, there isn’t a stamped date. It says Rush. In my book rush means develop and produce with all haste while still meeting design requirements.” I said as he found the documents and began reading them. My definition and his definition of Rush might be different but due to my clarification there shouldn’t be any issues there anymore. “I want to build a ship around this by the end of the month and have the first of the class on a shakedown cruise by the end of next month. That means for every extra day you take, you give one less day for the ship builders. Fair?”

 

[Laira Darkhold]

He stuttered for a moment trying to come up with a retort. While he didn’t have a deadline, taking too long would stall the project and the rough dates that were now set for him and would make him and the ship builders look bad on the company reports. “Uh… I suppose so. Three weeks to fabricate, test, and complete is a little slim though.” He was pushing for a longer deadline, just like every project manager did when faced with difficulty.

“Requisition whatever supplies or workers you need. I am sure you will figure this out in the time allotted.” I said, turning away and walking down the walkway towards the offices. He looked around for a moment then sighed deeply and returned to his work. With a make shift office being prepared for me in the administration tower, but for now I wanted to rummage around in these offices. I was bored, waiting on deadlines, and really just wanted to be seen by the design team once a day or so. It would make them think I was impatient and would drive them to put in more effort. There was a time I wasn’t this dark and foreboding with my employees, but it felt like so long ago.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Hypori: Eight Days Later

Not much had changed in eight days. I left the administration tower every day, normally around lunch time, to check on things with the design team. They were trudging along fairly well. Only a day off schedule so far and without any incidents to set them back. They were still working on building the system, making it run properly. According to them they hadn’t had any issues with the system.

“Alright, what’s the update for today. You all seem to be doing just fine on your own so far. A little behind, but that isn’t so bad.” I was trying to be reassuring to them, keep them from being on edge about a twenty four hour set back. The prototype was almost ready for testing, and then it could be field tested in the outer system.

“Not bad sir. We should begin testing the system with dry fires today. Assuming those work without issues we will move to firing at receptors tomorrow, and then field testing as soon as you can build us a make shift ship to use it on.”

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I nodded knowingly, “Well, I already have that prepared. It’s a piece of junk and going to be shot at a different piece of junk, but it flies and the other is equipped with the receptor nodes already.” He probably hadn’t realized that the test models would be going on to pieces of crap like the ancient MC80, a squadron of T-65 X-Wings, and an old GR-75 Transport, but why spend money on test models. Production models would be mounted on custom designed ships.

“Oh, alright then sir. I will call you once we have tried out the dry firing and gotten that fine-tuned.” He said in response. Alright, maybe he was getting a little too at ease if he was dismissing me, even if he was doing it politely.

“No. I think I will stay and watch. I want to see the data readouts as soon as you have them.” It was a task that could easily be done from my office. “Don’t think you can be rid of me that easily.”

 

[Laira Darkhold]

He started to apologize and then thought better of it and returned to his work. It took them a number of hours of tinkering, welding plates together, and minor adjustments to get ready to dry fire the system. Dry firing in this aspect was powering on, and firing the beam with nothing to target in hopes of simply making a condensed enough beam that the concept was feasible and success probable.

“Alright, testing should begin in about five minutes.” He said looking up at the balcony. I was sitting there, watching, playing with the tiny phantom I made from a rat. Practice makes perfect as they say. This one was simple and easy, hardly a serious drain on my senses, but also not deadly in the slightest.

“Proceed.” I said absent mindedly. I wasn’t paying them the attention they probably deserved, but then again how could I. It had been hours of sitting here bored, waiting on them. He looked back at the project sheepishly and returned to work.

“Begin power on sequence. Charge capacitors, and turn on the Ion Generators.” Workers and engineers clamored over the system watching screens with data displays on them, waiting for something important to happen.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

“Fire beam in ten.” Oh, great a count down. I sat up and looked down at them observing their senses, the little phantom scampering around on the balcony guard rail. “Three, two, one.”

The energy buzzed and something seemed to happen. Most of the engineers were elated looking at data displays. A couple were hugging or celebrating. “One hundred tests with no inconsistencies.” I said somberly from the balcony over the din of people and generators. For a second I felt them be reduced, like the wind had been ripped from their sails, then the leveled off, remembering this was a scientific experiment. Confidence returned and grew with a small nudge through the Force.

Fifty short burst tests and fifty sixty second tests later and the system was deemed successful. At least so far. It took about an hour and my focus had returned to the little Phantom making minor changes, making it change shape as they set up to test it on the receptor nodes they had prepared and co-designed.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I continued sitting in the comfortable chair that had been afforded to me on the balcony, messing with the small phantom, keeping working on it. Slowly deciding to make it a little bigger, a little more dangerous. To the people in the room it was little more than a shimmering ball of light, but to me it was an interesting play thing to keep my mind busy while they did boring work things. Maybe I should call Danger? Nah, she isn’t my biggest fan. Tmoxin was always that one person I liked but never drew her affections. There weren’t many others either. I pushed thoughts of my horrendously failed love life from my mind. Introspection was boring anyway.

“How much longer on the targeting test?” I asked, listening for a response.

After a few seconds one of the engineers, woman, the design leader, responded quietly, “About ten minutes sir. We just have to check the components after the dry firing tests to make sure none of them burned out.”

“How long will the targeting test be?”

“About a half hour. We want to run it continuously for as long as we can before you take the prototype to fit to a ship for field testing.” She said cautiously. The generators they had would be lucky to go for a half hour, but the ones on a stripped down MC80 would last for ages.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I sighed, “Very well.” This was taking a long time. Granted, they had done very well with their deadline. Only a day behind since the system needed to be tested then pushed into production, then a ship built around the system. “I’ll just sit here then. Keep me posted.”

She nodded, “Yes sir.” And quietly returned to work. So long as it worked like it was supposed to the system could prove useful to a competent fleet officer. I wasn’t that good and I could see the benefits of having a carrier that could shed its shields to its complement or provide back up for a close combat brawler trying to get to an artillery ship.

After a few minutes I looked up, and heard the chief engineer going through a countdown, “Four, three, two, one. Mark.” The generators revved and for a split second nothing could be seen happening until a field of energy encapsulated the little fighter sitting at the other end of the bay. Most of the design crew cheered upon seeing the field and sensor boards with data readouts lit up with what was happening with it.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I watched as the calmed down and started calling out numbers with increasing excitement. Just from that information I could glean that the tests were going fine as they continued to leave the beam projection on. I was already planning putting in the order of devoting a small section of the city here to producing the shield transfer system, but I tried not to get too far ahead of myself. There were still other tests to do and a few things to check off the list before I poured any more money and resources into it.

As time stretched on and the little translucent energy field at the far end of the warehouse didn’t waver, the engineers continued to mellow. They were happy and viewing the test as a success, but they were waiting to celebrate after the ship crew came in and hauled the system away to install for the next wave of tests. “I think we can call this one a win. Why don’t we go ahead and call the ship crew and get them started.”

The chief engineer nodded. I could tell he was in agreement, he just didn’t want to be the one to say it was all. Didn't want me to think he was overzealous.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

The work crew that came and moved the system to the dry dock on the other side of the city was quick and efficient. It didn’t take a lot of effort or deep thought to use a couple of cranes and a big repulsor sled to move a couple thousand ton set of satellite dishes and shield generators. The sleek form of an MC80 Liberty-class sat in the dry dock, its ventral facing basically torn all the way open to mid-ship. A few dozen decks gutted and carved out of the ship to make room for the prototype. Droids crowded around the area, swarming over the new parts and beginning analysis of how to install them without serious issues.

The easiest way was to lift the system into the ship, brace it in place, and then repair the ship back to working order around it. Not pretty, not effective in combat, but it would get the job done faster than the couple alternatives. The foreman for this job, and the engineers sat conversing about installation and hooking up the array properly. All this as I looked out a window somberly. “When will it end?” I whispered to know one in particular, about a dozen or so topics.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

As droids continued bolting and welding metal plates and braces together, trying their best to over secure the shield transfer array in place. They didn’t want it jostling around in transit and the old ship wasn’t exactly the smoothest ride in space. Still, the mass amount of droids in use made the process seem to slip by as they constantly made progress every time I returned my attention to them. I spent most of my days on Hypori playing with training the Phantoms. They were fun, and seeing as I thrived off fear, they expanded some options of invoking that kind of fear where people freeze up. They had that, you must kill something, possibly someone you know and care about in order to win mentality behind them.

“Sir, we need a signature on this form to use the Iso-five reactor.” The voice of the foreman snapped me back from my light training regime.

“There you go.” I said, signing my finger across the datapad, and watching it register as approved. So many checks and balances into those things.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Once the shield transfer array and the iso-five reactor had been installed into the ship, and the ship had been sufficiently repaired and made space worthy again after having been torn apart, the field test was ready to be put underway. A couple of modified X-Wings and an old GR-75 Transport, all fitted with receptor nodes, heaved off the ground and took to the skies ahead of the MC80 Liberty-class. All the ships were lucky to have a skeleton crew, even then mostly made up of Hegemonic Droids.

Clouds brushed away as the ship broke through the cloud layer of the planet pulling for the upper atmosphere. “How is she doing?” I asked, looking to the chief engineer. I wanted to make sure my little pet project here was holding up as the ship moved for exit velocity.

“It seems to be holding up just fine. Sensors indicate nothing so far. I don’t expect any issues with leaving the planet. Re-entry might be a little too shaky on this older vessel though.” He said.

Yeah, it was an older vessel and we were trusting our lives to it, but what is life without a little risk anyway?

 

[Laira Darkhold]

The ship broke atmosphere, following behind the other thirteen test vessels that were outbound. The edge of the system, beyond sensor range and observation. That was where we were heading. Out that way we could perform our test, and maybe have our model hit the production lines before the competition caught wind of it. That said, I doubted there would be much looking into this kind of tech, and those that did would probably just come to me and purchase one to reverse engineer once they came out into production. That or pirates would steal one of the ships after I sold a couple.

“Alright, so. Here we are out on the outer rim. We have two primary goals with this test. One we want to be able to hit a target from long range. I understand the energy is drawn to the receptors somewhat, but the beam and energy still need to coherent enough to transfer across the ship. Is everyone clear on that?” My voice was loud and commanding, the engineers and crewman nodding and giving a simple confirmation on the first goal. Awareness of objectives was important after all.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

“Second, we want to be able to target multiple ships and have them be capable of performing maneuvers as though they were in combat without being hampered by the system. The beam needs to be sustainable for at least thirty minutes without issue. Then we need to do a fire test. That will gauge how much pain the shield array can handle when divided across multiple targets.” More confirmation from the crew.

“Good. Let’s get a move on then. Captain you have the con.” I said, walking away from the bridge to the office on board the ship. That was where the big high definition HoloTV had been set up with displays and data terminals for viewing data as it occurred. There were already four engineers in the room sitting waiting. They were going to monitor the system’s performance from here and do their best to explain to me whether it was succeeding or failing.

“Lady and gentlemen,” I said acknowledging them as I entered the room. I took a seat behind the desk and picking up the sleek thin datapad that sat on it.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

The ships aligned themselves, the squadron of X-wings much closer than the large GR-75. First target was the transport. It was fairly small, corvette-class by all accounts. It was sitting at long range, which was goal number one. “Charging generators. Targeting vessel marked Alpha.”

“Alpha is targeted. Lock. On your orders captain.”

“Fire energy beam on my mark.” The captain said, starting a quick countdown. “Three, two, one. Mark.” The invisible to the naked eye beam fired out, illuminated on the screen by dedicated energy receptors so that it could be seen by the observers.

“Confirming contact.” The comms officer said as he held onto his headset, listening to the other ships crew. “Contact and dispersion confirmed by Alpha.”

The captain clapped his hands together. “Objective One Alpha complete. Sustain for thirty minutes and have Alpha move around a bit for One Beta and we can call this one a wrap.”

“Yes sir.”

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Thirty minutes passed slowly, but the beam maintained. Drain on the generators wasn’t outside expected levels, almost the same as running the shields on max power for thirty minutes. But since they weren’t taking damage, they weren’t draining away. Just sitting idle.

“Alright, times up. Let’s try maneuvers now. Target Snubs one through twelve.” The captain said, standing from his command chair once again now that the waiting was over.

“Snubs targeted.”

“Hit them with the beams and then have them do full combat maneuvers.”

“As ordered sir.”

Seconds passed and then the twelve fighters broke off into pairs and began rolling, juking, jinking, diving, and doing loops, trying to shake the energy beams. The Hi-Track mounts the dishes had been mounted on, dorsal and ventral offered two hundred seventy degree tracking and covered the same vertically. After a few moments of nothing changing the captain nodded to the crew. “Alright, one last thing. Open a channel to Snub Squadron.”

“Leader, go.” Came the voice of the lead test pilot over the comms.

“I need you all to pair up and drop one torp into each fighter for use to gauge the resilience of the shields. It should hold, but have EV gear ready.”

“Yes sir. Lining up.” Seconds ticked by and bright lights filled the sensor board I sat watching. As the twelve new lights died on impact most of the crew held their breaths. Even base shields and some luck and a pilot could survive a torpedo to the rear of full shields. Supported by these it was no issue. The attacks registered, but there was still a lot of shield barrier to go to bring down those fighters.