Nobody could ascend before transfigured...

[Julius Sedaire]

Location: Chis'canti Vami - The Hammer Home - Mandalorian Space - Research Laboratory Ship-side​

​

Ijaat stood stroking his goatee as his eyes watered and swam from sleep deprivation. The counter ticking off seconds into minutes into hours read seventy eight hours, fifty five minutes, and thirty eight seconds in flashing red digital display, a slight chiming that was just the annoying side of pleasant clashed with the otherwise utterly silent and dead atmosphere.

Beakers broiled slowly in different colored solutes, some with various measurement and metric devices inserted that were taking readings of goodness knows what. Other had half-formed, dead, or barely living specimens that looked like nothing more than bronze colored slugs with odd shells or backs to them, some of them looking almost chitinous and others looking translucent, despite the bronze tinge, almost gelatinous.

Turning, he moved to scribble in a notebook with an old fashioned graphite pencil and actual flimsi paper, an odd affectation for such a master of technology and science as he was. The paper was covered in cramped, pressured writing that spoke of obsession and desperation, geometric sketches and shapes interspersed within the formulaes and equations. The page next to the one he wrote on bore a sketch strikingly similar to the creatures in the various solutes, and he cursed, slamming hands on the durasteel table that were sheathed in shimmering gold, denting the surface of the working area as he vented his ire at his failures.

[member="Draco Vereen"]

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Ijaat Akun. He was a Mandalorian Beskarsmith of great esteem and even greater reputation in the field of metallurgy. Recently ArmaTech had acquired Gotal'Veman in a friendly, mutually beneficial agreement. I wasn't sure what all he needed this time but I brought some of my equipment and other such tools, as given his nature we would be doing something with metal. It was pretty much a given when dealing with a smith. In the past I had dealt with him with great success, and he had underwent some serious modifications at the hands of the Yuuzhan Vong and Sith Scientists. No doubt he was interested in controlling the biots and shaping done to him, or at the very least modifying them to be less aggressive. Assuming they were aggressive, as some biots were symbiotic in nature.

"Draco Vereen to Hammer Home. I've made it to you and I brought some things to work on your project." I said over the comm-link, pulling my ship alongside the larger forge ship. Good. We needed a specialty ship in order to properly build anything, and his ship was specially made to act as a mobile forge when need me.

[member="Ijaat Akun"]

 

[Julius Sedaire]

"Draco, this is Geoffery of the Hammer Home... You are clear to dock, we'll send a labor droid to help carry any of your things... Ijaat is occupied in the biological facilities and has been shut in there for several days without food or rest, excepting consumption of tihaar in mass quantity... So as a first act of business, if you could convince him to let the A1 medical droid examine him, or to sleep or eat, that would be most beneficial. Thank you sir..."

The transmission cut out as the hangar opened for Draco, waiting once again to welcome him to a this time fully developed ship.

Meanwhile, within, Ijaat had run out of paper, and had begun to write whatever formula he was working with on his forearms, covering them like a mad tattoo artist on a binge or bend. Which at this point in time was not terribly far off from what he actually was acting like. Hair in dissarray, skin pale, eyes sunken in and shadowed, he did not look well, but that which he was learning was.... It wasn't right, and shouldn't be possible... Somehow, someway, he was blending biology and metallurgy, or would be, with these little slugs.

Draco would know what to do. His young friend always seemed to have an idea about something.... His hand rested on a drawing of a pair of weapons, more formulas and such scrawled on them, and he set it aside for later. Draco would be quite interested in those he bet.

[member="Draco Vereen"]

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I listened to the AI that Ijaat used to control most portions of his ship, and a great deal of his armors and weapons. The AI, Geoff was one of Ijaat's own creations, something I wasn't yet capable of even attempting. But if Ijaat wasn't eating, drinking, or sleeping perhaps it was good he had sent for someone. "I'll give it a shot Geoff." I told the voice over the communication system. Even as I docked the ship I could hear the voice in my own head. <Failures cause death> it said, reminding me of my own failures, but I was not angry or stressed so the it was not difficult to keep the beast at bay right now. Right now what was important was figuring out what was wrong and how I could help.

I walked aboard the ship and the labor droid carried my tools down behind me while a lighted pathway lead me deeper into the forge ship. As I entered the room where Ijaat worked I surveyed the area. I noted the debris and the clutter from where he had been working constantly for a while. "Good afternoon vod. I got your message and figured I could come lend a hand." I looked him over, he was stressed, his vong-forming having a severe reaction with his psyche at the moment. "What are you working on? Give me the lay out of the problem and I'll mull it over, maybe get some of my engineers on it."
[member="Ijaat Akun"]

 

[Julius Sedaire]

In response, Ijaat mumbled, seeming barely cognizant of the fact of where he was, and pointed to a slug like thing barely a centimeter long that sat suspended in manda knew what in a jar on the table. Snapping his fingers, Geoff's face appeared on a holo-projector next to the jar, and with a mournful look, the Artificial Intelligence began to speak at length. Ijaat continued to work, scribbling furiously on his arm before leaping up to the table with a flat footed jump that took him well over five feet in the air and landing with a thud on the surface, beginning to sketch what looked like a crude mock up of the creature before detailing next to it what could have possibly been a genetic sequence.

As Geoff spoke, it detailed the problem, possibly going over Draco's head a few times, but always backing up to explain itself. What it amounted to was they had conducted a raid on a vong scout vessel in order to try and track down the whereabouts of Reverance, the Vong King. Failing that, and realizing that the loss of being in armor had severely altered his efficiency and methodology in combat. Somehow the adriel ooglith he was now host to did not interface as efficiently as would have been liked with combat systems in his old armor. Splices and adjuncts had bridged the gap, but there were merely temporary fixes that would likely break down in extreme situations or with repeated use. So Ijaat had begun to seek a solution.

At first he had focused on interface and control systems, and it had worked. but the amount of power needed to keep pace with the biot AND a being like Geoff and then typical mandalorian systems on top of that made it quite demanding power wise, and so he hard turned to the question of miniaturizing reactors and generators based off his design for his power armor. But he had hit a brick wall at the inorganic to organic bridge of armor plating. While he fought as good or better than before, stress tests showed he was operating at under three quarters the possibility this suit possessed for combat functionality.

So Ijaat had begun analyzing capture vong tech from the scout ship, and happened upon an oggzil... These vong creatures ate a metal rich diet, designed for use along vilips (the communication devices) and formed metal-like deposits along their vertebra, forming an antennae of sorts... So Ijaat had unearthed cloning project notes from when he had made Geoff, holed up in the biological station, and began to experiment on the oggzil biots, first managing to sucessfully clone them so he wouldn't run out of test subjects, and then beginning to try and alter their DNA crossbred with several other selected features to make them capable of becoming the armored plating he needed. A tiny sample of vodun crab armor remained for his research as well, though it apparently was yielding little in his research.

[member="Draco Vereen"]

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I let the problems that Ijaat, and the plans he had formed get repeated to me a few times, making sure to keep track, taking notes when possible, and writing little comments of my own on the datapad I was using. Merging Yuuzhan Vong Biots and Technology was dangerous and possibly impossible on the scale he was talking about. I thumbed through notes, kept track of Ijaat. "I could use medical data on your condition and the condition of the biot inside you now in order to keep track of everything going on with you." I told the man. I was used to stuff like this. My original partner had often been the same way, only sleeping when jobs were complete or when exhaustion overtook him. The elderly duros had retired earlier this year before ArmaTech had grown to the galactic scale, however, no other person knew metallurgy and biotech. Even though he didn't really mix them in the past.

"I know someone that can help out. He did synthesize a new composite once, so maybe he can help here. Plus his work with cybernetics lead to the creation of my enhancements." I said, motioning to my metallic spine. I had some ideas. Yuuzhan vong used near microscopic carrion eaters to replace dead cells with living tissue when adding biot arms to vong. Perhaps those bred like an ozgil would function like he wanted to. Especially if treated with some real tech and some new tech we might have to make.

[member="Ijaat Akun"]

 

[Julius Sedaire]

Ijaat finally looked up, almost seeming to come out of a stupor or daze of some great drug, shaking his head. Scrubbing at sweat matted, disarrayed hair, he looked down to where his buc'ye sat upended and the internals ripped out and in disarray. His eyes were clearer and less glassy before, and he looked about the laboratory in a stunned silence, turning about on the spot to examine the chaos and disarray. Finally the mandalorian shook his head as if amazed and turned to where the clock read-out sat spitting out the time awake and rubbed at his eyes slowly, grabbing the tihaar bottle and draining almost a third of the bottle in a long, ragged pull.

Truth was he wasn't just staying awake for research and solving this 'problem' he had. Every time he slept, the dreams crept in, like a slow poison for his sanity, and an unwanted guest in his mind. Visions of his family, the worry if they were alive or dead, the utter failure of his challenge to [member="Reverance"] and how easily the Sith Lord had dispatched him like some niggling bite-me fly. The refusal to sleep had as much to do with inner demons as it did outer challenges in the end, and he couldn't deny the fact this challenge was about more than war and honor. It was about revenge. He would kill the beast who took his family, if it was the last thing he did. No matter what he needed to do, all that he was would stop it. There was no more hiding what he was capable of to keep others comfortable...

And so, perhaps one of the brightest minds in the galaxy turned to Draco, and nodded, stumbling a bit as he took perhaps his first conscious step in days, but remaining upright.

"Where do we begin then?"

[member="Draco Vereen"]