Stolen not Earned

[Laira Darkhold]

The trip to Taris had gone well, extremely well. With the help of numerous Sith Lords assisting in securing the ancient fallen Keldabe-class Battleship, the members of Clan Vereen had been successful in locating, securing, and recovering the lost relic of ancient times. Mandal Hypernautics had of course created their own variation at some point, but they had access to the original schematics and designs, and I had a lust for improvement. Anything that had stood the test of time so long could benefit from an upgrade after a thousand years of warfare and strife. War is always the same, but the way it is fought always changes.

On Bothawui the engineering corps of ArmaTech’s Research and Development branch had returned from Hypori to go over the lengthy schematics of the original Keldabe-class Shield Leech weapon. Once they made themselves familiar with the design I could have a number produced for them to tinker with until they were able to improve upon the weapon.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I strolled into the conference room where the four team leaders sat waiting patiently, or impatiently in the young woman’s case. She was always a little too excitable about stuff like this. It was just a cannon after all. “Well, these are the schematics my people were able to secure. There was some struggling to get it this far, so I ask that you make the most of it.” There were nods, the young woman smiling ear to ear as she sat quietly, almost jittering with excitement.

“So, can anyone tell me how it works?” I asked after a moment of silence. I knew they had theories and questions about it, but without having looked over the schematics with a fine tooth comb they couldn’t tell me exacts.

The girl smiled and slightly raised her hand. With a nod I gestured for her to go ahead and speak, giving the room her hypothesis of the system.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

She stood and cleared her throat. “I would assume it works similar to a Tractor beam, but instead of locking on to physical matter, it locks on and draws energy from the target. Possibly using ion energy given that it severely damages shields but has little effect on the hull of an enemy warship.” She probably wasn’t far off target. Experience had taught me I didn’t know as much as I thought I did, or tried to convince others I did.

The others kind of looked around, waiting to see if there would be more to follow from her. When there was no more and she took a seat, the oldest man in the room spoke up. “You’re not wrong girlie. Its all about the sheath though. The weapon features a spiral Ion beam that’s negative charge spiraling works almost like a coil gun would, pulling energy straight from the shield it contacts. The Ion energy bleeds out into the shield while the spiral draws some back to the ship.”

 

[Laira Darkhold]

The old man was a mandalorian, having built some of the shield leeches. He was well versed in how it worked, but whether he was willing to work to improve what was arguably a flawless one was an unknown. “If you want to maximize the effect on shielding and energy the beam contacts, you have to gut an ion cannon’s effectiveness on the hull of a ship. I don’t know if it’s the smartest thing, but the standard model is kind of a middle ground able to do both, but not as well as one or the other.”

“Sounds like we specialize the weapon in its leeching effects and support it with Ion and EMP weapons and it will never become a serious issue. It’s not meant to kill everything, it’s meant to keep a ship alive just a little bit longer.” I said, deciding on the course of action I wanted. In effect if we took this route it would be a leeching shield cutter like Iron Crown used made back in the day.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Nods and confirmation from around the room. Good, everyone was on board with the plan. “Take the schematics and study them. Come up with a computer generated test model that should work as stated. Once you get a working test model, we can work on a prototype for the system.” Objectives set, goals made, and teams split up, the engineers and scientists made their way out of the conference room and settled on dividing up their work load between each other. It was fairly reasonable. The three men were hashing out who would do what and the young woman was getting stuck with most of the busy work.

Politics. It appeared in everything these days, but it was no matter. There were literally hundreds of things to do, and shoveling a lot of the busy work into one department could make or break them. I would sit back and let what happened, happen. Worst comes to worst she gets moved elsewhere where her skills and personality mesh better with the other team leaders.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

There were always complications in everything. Nothing ever went exactly as planned. If it was and had been for a long time, you were in for the curve ball of a life time. I was aware that was how things worked in the galaxy. So when I was told the team was hitting blocks and barriers that were stalling them already, I wasn’t too worried. On day six when they were still patching things together and doing their best to work around, I started to worry about it. That many problems and complications couldn’t be ignored, someone was going about it the wrong way. That was really the only explanation.

Having called them back to the conference room, I sat waiting at the head of the table for all four team leaders again. I had questions for them all, and there was no use repeating myself over and over. Once they had all arrived I dropped my feet off the table and sat up straight. “So, tell me. What seems to be the issue?” Obviously there was more than one, but I referred to the core issue. The one that was holding them back.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

The older Mandalorian born engineer spoke up first. “Well sir, we have a test model in the works, and its close. Our problem is the system leaks too much energy. Too much of what we pull from the test dissipates or is useless by the time it gets to the charge capacitors.”

“And we haven’t been able to figure out how to counteract that as of yet. There are a couple of working theories, but none of them have been able to be tested as they are completely theoretical with little basis for the simulator to plot around.” This time it was the nerdy one with glasses speaking up. He had done well with the Shield Transfer System, so hopefully he could figure something out.

“Very well. I’ve called in an expert to assist you and take over as Project Director. Mister Idiro will be arriving tomorrow and will be providing some much needed support. He’s an expert and he’s well ground, down to earth. I don’t expect there will be much he can’t work out with you all.” Old friend, and a founder of the company back when it was small and a custom work shop. He had dropped out of full time work when I took the company to the galactic market.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

In the morning the shuttle arrived at the large tower, docking and the elderly duros engineer walked from the ship with a broad smile. A longtime friend, and one of the best engineers in the known galaxy. Work experience from several major corporations and connections everywhere with every other smart person in the galaxy it felt like.

“It’s been a while.” I said, clasping his hand and leading him inside the tower.

“No doubt. It has been too long. You’ve built a new tower I see. What ever happened to the one on Concordia?” He asked walking along beside me as I lead him to the Research and Development Department of the massive tower.

“Its still there, but being Foreman I needed to move to live and operate from Bothawui. You know how politics are.” He knew that politics were mostly decrees by this point.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

“Yeah, I looked over the files on the trip out here. But you aren’t gonna like what I have to say about it.” He said as we entered the large workshop room of the tower.

“Oh, that bad huh.” I said wryly. As long as the system worked I couldn’t care less how, just so long as it did.

“Yeah, you need to slash the range down, and use a really big cannon. Its too small and trying to fire too far away. Cut and enlarge it and it will work. Just won’t be shoving them into every corvette, or probably frigate. You’ve already set it to where it isn’t going to be the big bad gun on a ship.” He said, pulling up a stool sitting next to the young woman in the design team.

She looked at him oddly, and then started typing on her dataterminal to make the adjustments Benji had just spoken about.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

He sat waiting for the render to complete and the one thousand simulations to run with a rough smile. I could tell by the way he was just sitting there, hanging out he was really confident in his assessment of the situation. That was good, but it also meant that the system would be limited a lot more than we had planned.

Once the simulations had run their course, the old duros grinned wide. “See. I told you it just needed a lot more umph behind it at close range. It’s a monster now though. Be terrifying to see on some Imp three’s or a Vic three. I can imagine this on a nice close range brawler just making a mockery of their feelings.”

He wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t the plan with the first set of ships the system was going to be placed on, but it was a nice, mean looking gun and I could imagine replacing a couple of the big octuple barbette guns with a pair of these would be mean. “Sometimes I hate it when you do that.”

He chuckled. “I know you do. Come on, you promised me a buttload of credits and lunch. I’ll buy too.” He said standing up, “You too. Come along I haven’t eaten since I left Jabiim.”